House Appropriations Committee Renews Attacks on Internet Users with Harmful Riders in Spending Bill

On June 9, the House Appropriations Committee passed the 2017 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill. The legislation includes numerous harmful policy riders, including three measures that significantly restrict the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to enforce the agency’s Open Internet Order. These riders accomplish that by suspending the rules until all legal challenges to them are resolved and by hampering the agency’s ability to investigate and prevent abuses.

Similar anti-network neutrality and anti-Internet provisions passed through House and Senate appropriations committees in 2015, but open Internet champions in both chambers negotiated their removal from the final spending bills. 2016’s spending bill also includes provisions attacking the Federal Communications Commission’s media ownership rules and the agency’s efforts to let people buy their own cable set-top boxes. Since the FCC passed net neutrality protections in February 2015, hundreds of thousands of supporters from across the country have urged Congress to reject these kinds of riders, and to let the FCC protect Internet users from blocking, discrimination and other abusive practices by broadband internet access providers. Rep Nita Lowey (D-NY) offered an amendment to strip from the bill approximately 30 dangerous riders, including the anti-net neutrality provisions. Rep Jose Serrano (D-NY) offered an amendment focused on removing just the net neutrality riders. Both amendments failed on party-line votes.