With the 115th Congress coming to a close, Demand Progress is pulling out all the stops to try and pressure the remaining Democratic holdouts--16 of them--to support rolling back the FCC's net neutrality deregulation.

The Congressional Review Act resolution nullifying the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom squeaked through the Senate, but couldn't pass the House without quite a few Republicans also signing on, the chances of which are slimmest to none. But Demand Progress is still trying to shame the holdouts into backing the CRA, accusing them of being "bought by Comcast"--and AT&T and Verizon.

Related: Activists Make Last-Minute Push for CRA

To make that point clear, "Democrats BOUGHT by Comcast" is the subject line on the Demand Progress email seeking donations for a last-minute push for nullification of the FCC deregulation.

"Some organizations are reluctant to call out Democrats when they do the wrong thing," said Demand Progress. "Not us. As a nonpartisan organization, we expect Democrats to live up to their campaign promises and pro-net neutrality rhetoric, and we're not afraid to hold them accountable."

Actually, the top eight members of Congress getting Comcast money are all Democrats according to OpenSecrets.org, seven of which did vote to repeal the Restoring Internet Freedom order. In fact, in the 2018 election cycle, Comcast contributed to 150 House Democrats, the vast majority of which support the CRA. So, clearly, getting a contribution from Comcast is hardly a gauge of where those legislators would stand on the issue.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) took to the Senate floor Monday afternoon (June 11) to excoriate FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and ISPs over the June 11 rollback of network neutrality regs, and said there would be a vote in the House on the House version of his Senate version of a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify that reg rollback.

It has already passed the Senate (52 to 47, with three Republicans breaking ranks), but is a far tougher task in the House, where it is some 48 votes short of getting a floor vote.

But Markey said the voice of the people would be raised in anger and descend electronically on his former House colleagues, saying that as of Monday the net regs were "just gone," which they were. He said the FCC had officially stripped consumers of protections so that they must now blindly trust their cable companies and ISPs to protect them. He called it "Big Cable's dream come true.

Net Neutrality Activists Get It in Gear

The senator said it was "just a matter of time before these big companies start to exercise their unfettered right to begin discriminating."

Markey asserted that the FCC had deregulated broadband access even in the face of, and ignoring the will of, 22 million Americans saying they wanted to keep it on the books.

The FCC is under no obligation to vote with a majority of commenters, only to take their views into account.

Both Markey and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) asserted that if there were a vote in the House today on the CRA, it would be approved (though there are only 170 votes for a petition to even get the CRA to a floor vote).

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) vowed to keep fighting to nullify the FCC's network neutrality rules rollback, which went into effect Monday (June 11), but in outlining the road ahead, he also put a spotlight on the up-Hill battle.

Doyle is shepherding the House version of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify FCC chair Ajit Pai's Restoring Internet Freedom Order. It has already passed the Senate, but the House is a far steeper climb.

Related: House CRA Teed Up

In a statement, Doyle slammed the rollback. 

"Americans lost an important right today when the FCC’s order nullifying the federal Net Neutrality policy went into effect,” he said. “People won’t see any major changes today, but unless Net Neutrality is restored, consumers, innovator, and small businesses will see their service deteriorate, their choices decrease and their costs go up over time as Internet Service Providers start throttling internet speeds, blocking content and prioritizing service to hurt their competitors.”

ISPs have been saying nothing would change Monday, so critics are arguing that that is just a strategy to avoid immediate pushback, and, like the lobster in a pot with the water temperature raised slowly, the repercussions will only become apparent over time.

Doyle also said that he currently has 170 votes for a discharge petition that would force Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to hold a floor vote on the CRA. Ryan is unlikely to do so otherwise.

"We just need 50 more to get a vote," Doyle said, but that "just" is a big ask since the 170 does not even include all the Democrats, and the 50 more would have to include a couple dozen Republicans.

Net neutrality activists, including in Congress, hope to use the issue of the net neutrality rule rollback to turn more red seats blue in the midterm elections if they can't convince current members to support the CRA, which would have to pass in this Congress or forever hold its peace.

Republicans continue to try to get Democrats to drop the CRA and work on bipartisan net neutrality legislation, but Democrats counter that is a stall tactic and the bills they have offered up would impermissibly narrow the FCC broadband regulatory authority, a price they are not willing to pay to restore bright-line rules against blocking, throttling or even paid prioritization, says one highly placed Democratic Hill staffer.

At noon Wednesday (May 16), the Senate is scheduled to begin consideration of the legislative maneuver to nullify the FCC's network neutrality deregulation.

That is when a motion will be made to proceed to consideration of S.J. Res. 52, the Congressional Review Act resolution rolling back the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which eliminated the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization and reversed the classification of ISPs as Title II telecommunications services subject to common-carrier regulations.

It could pass if ailing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is unable to vote or if the Democrats pick up another Republican. That would buoy net-neutrality activists, but it is still a very long shot for the CRA to make it past the other two houses, the House of Representatives and the White House. One Hill staffer speaking on background, however, said activists have been telling Hill Democrats that some three dozen moderate Republicans in the House could potentially be swayed.

Related: Net-Neutrality Rules Rollback Effective June 11

The resolution was discharged from the Commerce Committee and put on the Senate floor calendar May 9.

The joint resolution is only two sentences long, but it is freighted with meaning for net-neutrality activists trying to restore the bright-line rules and ISPs who pushed for their elimination.

Joint Resolution                                                                                                                                                      "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 'Restoring Internet Freedom.'                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 'Restoring Internet Freedom' (83 Fed. Reg. 7852, February 22, 2018), and such rule shall have no force or effect."

The resolution has 48 co-sponsors, 46 Democrats and two independents, as well as one Republican vote in its camp, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

The Senate has until June 12 to vote on the resolution, while the House has until the end of the year.

The resolution currently needs one vote in the Senate to pass, while it is dozens of votes short in the House and is unlikely to be signed by the president if it got that far. President Trump supported the FCC's rules rollback, though predicting the president's future actions based on past statements is problematic.

Senators did not wait until the net neutrality CRA was officially opened for debate to debate it, which some did in dueling morning speeches.

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McDonnell asid the CRA did not seek to reign in ove-rregulation, which he suggested was the proper use, but to "reimpose it." He said the CRA would handicap the FCC's ability to revive the

Restoring Internet Freedom order even if they were seen as necessary. That is because the CRA resolution would prevent the re-imposition of substantially similar deregs by the agency.

McConnell said Republicans have reached out on bipartisan legislation, but said Democrats had made it clear that the CRA, which would not ultimately pass, was about the mid-term elections.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) probably summed up the Senate Republicans' view of the CRA: "If it passes, it will be a statement and nothing more."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the lead sponsor of the CRA, said the CRA was needed to put consumers ahead of the rich and powerful and the vote would be "on the future of the internet."

Markey said the vote was about showing whose side senators were on. He also called it "my Congressional Review Act resolution to save network neutrality." Markey said that if the dereg takes effect June 11, consumers will be left defenseless against big ISPs and their lobbyists, whose pledges of self-regulation he suggested were hollow.

"We need comprehensive privacy legislation and real net neutrality legislation enacted at the federal level now, not later, and the CRA vote just delays that and gives members of Congress an easy out." -Mike Montgomery, CALinnovates

Nearly every day brings new stories of children being tracked, Russians being indicted, and online-fueled hate exploding into real-world violence – all while the big tech platforms that enable this chaos report record earnings and shrug off Congressional oversight without breaking a sweat.

The internet has never been more vital to our lives, our culture and our economy, but it has never been more out of balance.

The American people are demanding comprehensive action to rein in these giant platforms, protect our privacy and permanently keep cyberspace open and free – with 80% believing the big platforms haven’t done enough to secure their networks. Nearly 60% are concerned the government won’t do enough to solve the problem. Yet, amazingly, the only internet bill on the agenda in Congress is a backward-looking resolution that will actually reduce our privacy protections.

The resolution is called the “CRA” (for Congressional Review Act), and it’s being pitched as a way to protect net neutrality. But that’s a complete charade. We need comprehensive privacy legislation and real net neutrality legislation enacted at the federal level now, not later, and the CRA vote just delays that and gives members of Congress an easy out instead of pushing them to draft, debate and support real, bipartisan, pro-consumer legislation.

The CRA doesn’t enact any permanent net neutrality protections. It also does nothing to protect our privacy, secure the internet from Russian bots or election attacks, bring accountability to all tech platforms across the board, or boost innovation and ensure competition.

All the CRA would do if it passed (something that itself is extremely unlikely in a Republican Congress) is temporarily restore an old and out-of-date version of net neutrality that applies to broadband providers only and then send the entire issue back to the Federal Communications Commission, where anything could happen – including reversal of even those limited rules.

And worse, in the process, the CRA would strip away one of the key internet privacy protections Americans currently enjoy. Right now, the Federal Trade Commission is the lead privacy cop for the big cable and telecom companies. It protects Americans from unfair and deceptive practices online, including breaches of privacy policies and other abuses of our data. This is why the Obama Administration made “strong enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission” the centerpiece of its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in 2012.

But the CRA would eliminate the FTC’s jurisdiction over internet providers – creating a privacy gap when more data protection, not less, is necessary.

Congress has an enormous opportunity in front of it. There is wide, bipartisan agreement that we need new, stronger rules of the road for the entire internet – tech platforms, broadband providers, and any entity collecting and using consumer data.

The recent Facebook hearings had members of both parties demanding accountability and calling for solutions. One Representative from a district decimated by online opioid sales put it most directly, saying, “Facebook is actually enabling an illegal activity, and in so doing you are hurting people.”

It’s not often the stars align in this way – and it would be a dereliction for Congress to squander this chance for real progress in favor of an empty, feel-good CRA.

Instead, Congress should be driving toward comprehensive legislation to strengthen our privacy; make net neutrality permanent; apply it to all companies that pick and choose what we can see and do online; and require real cybersecurity and data protection that includes strong penalties for companies that breach our trust.

That’s the kind of vote a woke Congress would take.

Mike Montgomery is the executive director of CALinnovates, a technology advocacy organization.

ISPs pushed back Tuesday (Feb. 27) on the OneMoreVote protest against the network neutrality rules rollback, calling it a "so-called day of action" and branding a Democratic effort to reverse the rollback as a rushed, short-circuited process, though it is a process that ISPs have favored elsewhere.

That came in a statement from Broadband for America, whose members include NCTA, USTelecom and CTIA, together representing the largest ISPs, wired and wireless.

The OneMoreVote protest is looking to get one more Republican vote for a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify the FCC's Dec. 14 vote to eliminate the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

The CRA is likely to be launched Tuesday given that it is the purported day of action, and the fact that publication of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom order last week triggered a 60-legislative-day window for passing the CRA.

Broadband for America slammed the CRA as a way for a "simple majority in Congress to unilaterally overturn a federal agency's policies and regulations" using a mechanism that is "essentially writing a law that bypasses debate and utilizes partisan voting procedures, and allows for a rushed, short-circuited approval process, with no public comment or input whatsoever.

Many of the same ISPs were not opposed to Republicans using the same legislative maneuver to overturn the previous Democratic FCC's broadband privacy framework when they thought that should go.

In this case, however, they see the CRA as "a step backward" toward "depression-era rules."

Former Democratic House Communications Subcommittee chair Rick Boucher, now with the Internet Innovation Alliance, said Democrats should drop their effort to nullify the FCC's Dec. 14 net neutrality rules rollback and instead work toward legislation mirroring the 2010 Open Internet order.

That order put forth the compromise rules based in Title I that virtually all the ISPs agreed to.

Boucher said activists pushing a Congressional Review Act resolution in Congress to roll back the rollback are delaying a legislative solution that would insure an open internet for everyone.

Related: Sen. Kennedy Pressed on Net Neutrality CRA

In a commentary for Bloomberg/BNA, Boucher said the 2010 would be a "useful" model for that legislative solution.

"Codification of the requirements of that rule, along with a provision declaring broadband to be an information service, would be a simple and straightforward legislative enactment giving both Democrats and Republicans satisfaction on their key priorities," he said. "For Democrats, the priority is open internet rules similar to the ones Democrats endorsed with the 2010 Open Internet order.

Related: Coming to Terms With Title II

For Republicans, the statute would return broadband to information-service status. It’s a win-win solution that should receive bipartisan support.”

Boucher said an added benefit of such legislation is that it could create online privacy protections that apply to the edge as well as ISPs, "so that consumers won’t have to wonder what protections they have, depending on how and where they access the internet."

Boucher said he is confident the two sides can come together, a sentiment expressed earlier in the week by former Communications Subcommittee chair and current full committee chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.), but that would appear to be a long shot given the current tenor of debate in D.C. and, specifically, most Democrats hard line on returning to a Title II regime -- a nonstarter for Republicans.

All the Senate's Democrats and a majority of House Dems have said they would support the CRA nullifying the rules and returning to Title II.

Boucher has been consistent in his opposition to Title II. As chairman of the subcommittee back in 2010, he said he would prefer legislation establishing targeted network openness principles to the FCC's proposal of applying Title II regulations to the transmission component of broadband.

Boucher is currently head of the government strategies group at Sidley & Austin in Washington.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee Communications Subcommittee, said he will propose using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the FCC's rollback of net-neutrality rules if FCC chair Ajit Pai does not stand down.

That is the legislative maneuver Republicans used to invalidate a number of Obama-era regs earlier this year, including the repeal of the broadband privacy rules established under the Tom Wheeler-led FCC.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) Tuesday (Dec. 12) called on Congress to step in, as well, to resolve the net-neutrality regulation debate, but not that way.

“The answer to monopolies has always been regulation and competition, and as much as some of the FCC commissioners don’t want to acknowledge it, net neutrality and the regulation of ISPs under Title II are essential for providing real competition in the broadband marketplace," Doyle said.

Doyle said he and dozens of other legislators would be sending a letter Wednesday (Dec. 13) urging Pai not to repeal the regs, but that if the FCC does so Dec. 14, as planned, Doyle would introduce the CRA-based legislation.

It is essentially a shot across the bow since the Republicans controlling Congress are fans of the reg rollback. Republicans did use the CRA to reverse the FCC's vote, under Pai's Democratic predecessor, on a broadband privacy framework.