Gov performance

I met with small and rural broadband providers that told me that the Commission’s paperwork and reporting obligations alone now consume 23 weeks of work per year or five months of full-time labor. I heard from a small wireless provider that they have to take one of the few people they employ off of a customer service job or marketing effort and sit them in a room to complete FCC paperwork. These small businesses are not corporate behemoths. They do not have, and simply cannot afford, an army of regulatory lawyers.

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) sent a letter to Universal Service Administrative Company CEO Radha Sekar requesting the audits conducted during the preceding three fiscal years for both the Federal Communications Commission’s Legacy High-Cost and Rural Health Care programs in order to better understand the potential for waste, fraud and abuse in the programs. The High-Cost Program is by far the largest Universal Service Program, spending $4.5 billion each year. Rep Pallone is requesting that the Universal Service Administrative Company provide:

Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Justice Department to expand any planned investigation into the hundreds of fake comments that appeared on the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rule to rulemakings from all agencies. In a letter, Reps Bobby Scott (D-VA), Frank Pallone Jr.

The Federal Communications Commission released an 8-page document outlining "A Year of Action and Accomplishment" led by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, broken down into the following categories: bridging the digital divide, promoting innovation and investment, protecting consumers and enhancing public safety, transparency and process reforms, and cutting and modernizing outdated regulations. 

Some Democratic members of the House Commerce Committee have asked the Government Accountability Office to "review" the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to deploy the Lifeline National Verifier, which is meant to be a more efficient way to monitor who gets the Lifeline Universal Service Fund subsidies and make sure they are eligible for the money.

On Dec 4, 2017, several members of Congress wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing deep concern about the "proposal to roll back critical consumer protections by dismantling...current net neutrality rules." Due to reports that bots may have interfered with the proceeding and reports that "50,000 consumer complaints seem to have been excluded from the public record", the members of Congress requested that the FCC delay its planned vote on the item until it could conduct a thorough review of the state of the record and "provide Congress with greater assurance

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen released a summary of the agency’s major accomplishments one year after being named to lead the agency.

Among the accomplishments:

The Federal Communications Commission invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on the information collection necessary for the Restoring Internet Freedom Report and Order's rule requiring internet service providers disclosure of certain network management processes, performance characteristics, and other attributes of broadband internet access service. The order eliminates the additional collection imposed by the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order and adds a few discrete elements to the information collection requirements.

[Commentary] Virtually every time President Donald Trump speaks he raises three possibilities to explain his nonsensical, offensive or flat-out wrong assertions: 1) He doesn’t get basic concepts his aides and lawyers must have explained to him; 2) he understands and then forgets; or 3) he is showing contempt for voters’ intelligence and/or for our democratic system. Republicans can defend this basket-case presidency all they please, but in doing so they reveal themselves to be either dense, dishonest or demagogic. The GOP and President Trump are indeed one and the same. [Jennifer Rubin]

Demand Progress, which strongly opposes Sinclair's proposed purchase of Tribune, wants the Federal Communications Commission inspector general (IG) to investigate FCC Chairman Ajit Pai over what it suggests are decisions meant to favor the broadcaster. "From the beginning, chairman Pai has been eager to roll out the red carpet for Sinclair and grease the wheels to enable this merger to happen," Demand Progress said in launching the petition.