Kay Hutchison

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment at the desk be agreed to, and I urge passage of the bill, as amended.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table and that any statements related to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I am very pleased we have been able to pass this bill for the expedited travel procedures for our military personnel. The TSA will have about 180 days working with the Department of Defense to get procedures in place to do this. I hope our military people, wherever they are in the world, know how much America appreciates their service. We know they are fighting for our way of life to prevail for our children and future generations. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Senator from North Dakota because Senator Hoeven has been a leader on this issue, knowing how important this find is, and how much more capacity we will have for affordable energy in our country if we can extend the pipeline. This is a pipeline that is not just starting from Canada into the United States. The Keystone Pipeline was started in 2008. The initial line moves 590,000 barrels of oil per day from northern Alberta to points in Cushing, OK, and Patoka, IL. The XL extension--which is what we are talking about that is being held up by the State Department--is currently under review. It would expand the system by 700,000 barrels per day--so more than double what we are getting already--and bring the line further south to Texas. Well, now, why is that important? It is because 25 percent of the refinery capacity in America is in Texas. It is in the gulf coast of Texas. That is where the refiners are. We are talking about producing now more affordable energy for all the consumers in our country by bringing it straight down and having it refined and sent back out to all points in America. Otherwise, what my colleagues have just been talking about--Senator Isakson and Senator Hoeven--is that we will see Canada export this to other countries, whether it be China or other countries, and eventually it is going to be coming back into the United States much more expensively to be refined in Texas and sent out. So specifically for Texas, it would put our State's 26 refineries into probably 24 hours' of business, which means lots of jobs in Texas. That 25 percent of U.S. production is approximately 5 percent of worldwide capacity. So we are talking about lowering the price of energy throughout our country and the world. It would produce an estimated $2.3 billion in new spending and generate more than $48 million in new tax revenue for my state alone. It would result in 700,000 barrels of oil a day, as I have said. We know the Canadian find--the sands that have been found there--is the third largest capacity, next to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, in recoverable oil in the world. So we have the third largest reserve in Canada and we know we have the ability to bring that oil down, have it refined, and go out to the United States because dependence on the Middle East and North Africa has certainly led to price spikes. Venezuela is certainly not a reliable partner right now and supply interruptions threaten our economy and our national security. So the Keystone XL Pipeline would certainly be a boom to Texas and Texas jobs. But more than that, it is going to benefit every consumer of energy in America. It will more than double what we can buy from Canada, and think of the reliability of our Canadian relationship. The reliability of our trade and our relationship with our neighbor to the north, Canada, is among the most solid we have in all of the globe. It is essential we build this pipeline. As the leader said earlier, this is a no-brainer--as close as you can get to a no-brainer for building our economy, creating jobs, and creating more tax revenue that will bring down the deficit we have heard so much talk about on the other side--but this would do it the old-fashioned way: by giving people the ability to provide for their families and contribute to the economy of our country. That is the way we want to see increased revenue in this country: with more jobs and paying taxes, not collecting benefits because they cannot find work. It is right here, and it does not cost the government a dime because it is private investment that will bring this oil to the refineries and put it back out to the United States. I urge the President of the United States to go to the State Department and say: Let this go. In lieu of urging the President, we have a bill that was started by Senator Hoeven, with 40 sponsors, that will tell the President: Now is the time--it is long past due time--for us to create the jobs in this country that are not going to be taxpayer funded, that are going to be privately funded. They are going to create cleaner, better, cheaper, more efficient energy; and they are going to create jobs which people want in this holiday season and on into the future years. So I thank my colleague from North Dakota for giving us this chance to tell the American people we have an answer to jobs and to bringing down the deficit and increasing revenue the way people want to: by providing for their families and paying taxes with the money they are earning. It is a win for everyone. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for leading this effort.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I am pleased today to support the nomination of Mr. James Rodney Gilstrap to serve as a Federal district judge for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, TX. Mr. Gilstrap attended Baylor University where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in religion. Following his graduation, Mr. Gilstrap continued his studies at Baylor University Law School, where he served as associate editor of the Baylor Law Review and received his juris doctor in 1981. Mr. Gilstrap began his professional career in Marshall, TX, where he still resides today. In August of 1989, Mr. Gilstrap was appointed county judge of Harrison County and was then elected to the same position for the next three terms. In 2002, he retired as a county judge and returned to private practice at Smith & Gilstrap, where he still practices today. Mr. Gilstrap has earned the respect and esteem of the legal community he has served and his professional credentials will continue the strong history of the Federal bench in Texas. Mr. Gilstrap's impressive career is complemented by his dedication to his community. In addition to serving for years as county judge, Mr. Gilstrap has served on the board for the Harrison County Historical Society, the United Way for Harrison County, and the Trinity Episcopal Day School. He also served for 16 years on the Courthouse Preservation Council to help with the renovation of the Marshall courthouse that was completed in 2009. Mr. Gilstrap's passion for his work and his community will be a tremendous asset to the Marshall bench. I join his family in congratulating him on all his outstanding accomplishments: his wife Sherry Sullivan Gilstrap, his daughter Lauren, who is continuing her medical studies at Harvard Medical School, and his son Stephen, who graduated from Yale Law School this year. I am pleased to recommend his confirmation to my colleagues. Nomination of Caitlin Halligan

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Missouri for managing the bill for our side because there are three appropriations bills included in this package. I am also pleased that we are actually passing appropriations bills that have been amended and debated in the Senate the way it ought to be done. I am also very pleased to talk about the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies bill, which is the subcommittee on which I am the ranking member. The chairman, Senator Mikulski, has already spoken earlier this evening on the bill and what is in it and how we put it all together. I can't thank Senator Mikulski enough for being the kind of chairman who could really bring people together, bring the House Members together, where we had some significant differences. I believe she and I were on the same page, that we have national priorities in this bill, and we ensured that those priorities were met because they are so important for our country. It wasn't easy. As has been said by everyone who has spoken, difficult choices had to be made. We had an allocation that was $583 million below the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution level. It was $4.7 billion below the President's request. This bill is also in accordance with the Budget Control Act that passed on August 2, 2011. I just want to mention on that point that all of the appropriations bills that have gone through the Appropriations Committee this year have met the Budget Control Act requirements. That is something I think we should have done and certainly something we were expected to do. There are some Members, however, who will be speaking against these bills. They wanted a different standard from the standard we set, which was below the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution and below the President's request. But that is the standard we should have met, and we did. We struck a balance between the competing interests of law enforcement, terrorism, research, and competitiveness through investing in science. I think the chairman, Senator Mikulski, spoke about the specifics of that, but I want to highlight some of the programs of national interest that I was particularly insistent that we focus on. We have worked hard to ensure that law enforcement receives the priority funding needed to protect our Nation, our communities, our children, and the victims of crime. That was a particular point that Senator Mikulski made and with which I agree. We have also made sure the FBI has the resources it needs to continue its major role in the global mission of counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Director Robert Mueller has seen the largest transition of the agency certainly in modern times, but maybe ever--a transformation from a traditional crime-fighting organization into an intelligence-driven, threat-focused law enforcement organization and a full member of the U.S. intelligence community since 9/11. A lot of people are going to say: Well, gosh, why would you increase the FBI? Well, because they are a part of our national security today. They are no longer just a domestic crime-fighting agency--though very important but nevertheless a smaller function. They are part of our U.S. intelligence agencies that are helping us fight terrorism all over the world. So we funded them, and I am glad we did. We have also included language to encourage the Department of Justice to maintain its current fiscal year 2011 level of funding that focuses on the southwest border. This is so important, as we read about the atrocities happening in Mexico and on our border, some of which have begun to spread across the border, and drug cartels are becoming increasingly emboldened. I was talking to someone in the law enforcement community today who has had very high positions in our government, and he said those drug cartels are terrorists. I agree with him. Those drug cartels are terrorists. What they are doing to innocent people is atrocious. So we are encouraging and we have given the money to the Justice Department for the southwest border. The El Paso Intelligence Center is another important program that is one of our first safeguards along the border. It is a national tactical intelligence center that supports law enforcement in the United States, Mexico, and the whole Western Hemisphere. It is the Drug Enforcement Administration's most important intelligence-sharing entity focusing on all things related to our borders. Another important program in this bill is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program which we funded to provide Federal assistance to the States and localities that are incurring the costs of incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens who have been accused or convicted of State and local offenses. We know there are counties throughout our country that do not have big budgets. Yet we have illegal alien criminals who are being put in county jails and city jails and it is important for the Federal Government and it is the Federal Government's responsibility to pay for housing those illegal alien criminals. We have done so in this bill. I was also pleased to work with Senator Mikulski and Jon Kyl, the Senator from Arizona, to include more money for the U.S. Marshals Service for its mission along the southwest border, including detention construction and security upgrades in southwest border Federal courthouses. The last thing I wish to mention is that we had a very moving ceremony yesterday honoring the significant astronauts--they are all significant, but some of those who took the first chance to go where no human being had ever been, and we honored them with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest honor Congress can bestow on a civilian: John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first and second men to walk on the Moon, the Americans who did that, and they were ferried there by Michael Collins, who landed Apollo 11. We talked, and the speeches were very uplifting, about the importance of space exploration and what it has done for our country. It has clearly been an economic boon to this country. It has created jobs, it has created better quality of life, and it has also inspired generations of scientists. With the significant support of Senator Mikulski, we were able to give NASA the funding it needs to assure that we have not only the vision that was established by Congress in the 2010 authorization bill but the funding to achieve the vision going forward. Since our space shuttle program has been shut down, we are now on a mission to provide a commercial crew vehicle to take our astronauts to the space station, where we are doing scientific research, and we have fully funded the launch vehicle that is going to take our astronauts beyond Earth orbit and into the asteroid and, hopefully, Mars. That funding has started with this appropriations bill that is going through this year. So we will have our launch system and our Orion capsule that will be the next generation of space exploration for our country, and Senator Mikulski and I agreed on that priority, along with the Webb telescope, which is a very significant scientific priority, that we would assure that those priorities were met. We support the emerging commercial space companies to bring cargo and astronauts to the space station, and our investment for discovery on the space station as well as the science that is gotten from these wonderful, incredible telescopes that fly out there in space and gather information. NASA has now released its design for the heavy launch vehicle that will be able to carry our astronauts in the Orion crew vehicle to the Moon, the asteroid, and beyond. Now that that decision has been made, we can focus on the future and on moving human exploration forward. NASA has announced its commitment to the path that Congress authorized, and now we are providing the funds to accomplish the development of that rocket. Chairman Mikulski and I have strived to produce a bill that reflects not only the Senate's priorities but the needs of our Nation. Not only do I commend her and all the Senators who have a part in passing these bills and the House Members who also have a significant part, but our staffs did a lot of the work in making sure these priorities were met. Her staff, Gabrielle Batkin, Jessica Berry, Jean Toal Eisen, Jeremy Weirich, and Molly O'Rourke did wonderful work and were so close in concept and in close relationships and working relationships with my staff, James Christoferson, Goodloe Sutton, and Allen Cutler. I recommend our bill. I think we stayed within the budget resolution, the Budget Control Act we passed, but we set the priorities, and I am very pleased to offer it to the Senate tonight. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, over the past 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations from Washington. With the strength of free market forces behind it, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation. It has spurred business development, much needed job creation, millions of jobs in fact. If we are going to keep an open and free Internet and keep the jobs it spawns, we should reject the FCC regulation on net neutrality. The FCC reversed its successful hands-off approach last December by passing net neutrality rules where the FCC has essentially granted itself power over all forms of communication, including the Internet. Congress did not explicitly delegate this authority to the FCC, and it is our responsibility to hold on to the power that only we authorize regulations where they are needed. Unelected agencies do not get to decide on their own that something needs to be done that Congress has not, in its congressional and constitutional responsibility, decided is necessary. These regulations on broadband providers establish the FCC as the Internet's gatekeeper--a role for which government is not really suited when innovation could be stifled. Instead of spending their resources on new job-creating investments, on new products, on new services, Internet providers are going to have to spend money on lawyers and lobbyists to comply with and go through the processes the FCC will require. Congress has never given the FCC this authority. Regulators and bureaucrats all across the government are overstepping their bounds in many areas--the NMB, the NLRB, the EPA--and it is time for Congress to push back, and we can do it today. Regulators should not regulate without the explicit authority of Congress. The court said so in the Comcast case.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, the success of the Internet should not be tampered with. We need to pass S.J. Res. 6 that is before us today. Madam President, have the yeas and nays been called for?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, what about our second vote on the other Congressional Review Act?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I ask for the yeas and nays on that as well.

Mrs. HUTCHISON

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, today's debate concerns S.J. Res. 6. In a larger context, though, we have been having this debate for 34 months. The theme is, the Obama administration's relentless imposition of new and destructive regulations has not helped us get into a recovery and, in fact, I think is freezing our economy. We have seen it with the Environmental Protection Agency when it tried to regulate carbon emissions and greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act, a purpose for which Congress never intended the law to be used. We have seen it with the National Mediation Board when it overturned nearly a century of precedent and issued a new rulemaking to allow unions to be formed more easily but harder to decertify. We have seen it with the National Labor Relations Board when it took the shocking step of challenging Boeing's decision to create new jobs by building a new factory in South Carolina, simply because South Carolina is a right-to-work State. Today's issue involves bureaucratic overreach into a symbol of American innovation and creativity, the Internet, because the Federal Communications Commission has now decided to regulate the Internet. Last December, three FCC Commissioners, on a party-line vote, voted to impose rules that restrict how Internet service providers offer broadband services to consumers. Those rules, known as net neutrality, impose 19th century-style monopoly regulations on the most competitive and important job-creating engine of the 21st century, the Internet. This marks a stunning reversal from the hands-off approach to the Internet that Federal policymakers have taken for more than a decade. During the last 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations imposed by Washington. Powered by the strength of free market forces, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation, spurring business development and much needed job creation. The former Democratic FCC Chairman, William Kennard, stated in 1999 ``[t}he fertile fields of innovation across the communications sector and around the country are blooming because from the get-go we have taken a deregulatory, competitive approach to our communications structure--especially the Internet.'' The present FCC is reversing that policy that has been successful beyond our expectations. Broadband Internet networks have powered the information and communications industry, which in 2009 accounted for more than 3.5 million high-paying jobs and about $1 trillion in economic activity. This industry has been an engine for major economic growth even during these difficult times. Yet the FCC's rules could severely jeopardize this industry's vast potential. Net neutrality is intended to limit how Internet service providers develop and operate their broadband networks. The net neutrality order allows the FCC to tell broadband providers what kind of business practices are reasonable and unreasonable. The FCC, however, did not bother to clearly define in its rules what the agency considers to be reasonable. This point is vital to understand. With such an arbitrary and yet poorly defined standard, companies will be forced to err on the side of caution. Rather than risk possible punishment from the FCC, many companies will simply decide: Maybe we will not invest right now in new technologies. Maybe it is too risky to develop and deploy new services. At the very least, it will delay such investment. This kind of regulatory uncertainty will be crippling for companies and particularly small providers. We have heard exactly that from a small wireless Internet provider in Wyoming called LARIAT. This is a provider that is serving remote areas and trying to expand to other unserved years. LARIAT testified before Congress that these FCC regulations are already harming its ability to attract investors, grow its business, hire more workers, and serve new customers. Forcing broadband companies to ask the government for permission before moving forward is exactly what we should try to avoid when reviving our economy. This FCC regime will lead to stagnation in Internet innovation in the United States, placing us at a disadvantage against overseas competitors who are not burdened with similar rules. Moveover, Internet providers will end up spending resources on lawyers and lobbyists in order to comply with the FCC's rules, rather than investing those dollars in innovation. Small companies will find it even more expensive to navigate Washington, DC. This certainly will not help consumers, particularly in rural areas, and will only increase the costs they have to bear. Before any new regulations are forced on American businesses, it is the government's responsibility to clearly show, one, there is an actual problem that needs to be addressed. That should be foremost. With the FCC taking such a large departure from the agency's previous light-touch approach, one might think the FCC could point to a long list of net neutrality violations and problems that need to be fixed. That is not the case here. In a 134-page regulatory order, the FCC spent only three paragraphs attempting to catalog alleged instances of misconduct. Within those three short paragraphs, every alleged problem was addressed under the FCC's existing rule or, if not, it was fixed by the provider under pressure from the public or the competitive marketplace, where it should be fixed. As former FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker noted in her statement dissenting from the FCC's net neutrality order, the Commission was ``unable to identify a single ongoing practice of a single broadband provider that it finds problematic upon which to base this action.'' To put it simply, the FCC has issued new rules without even demonstrating that intervention is actually necessary. Despite protests to the contrary, these net neutrality regulations on broadband providers clearly establish the FCC as the Internet's gatekeeper, a role for which the government is not suited. Innovation does not work on a government timetable nor does it thrive through a maze of roadblocks. Ironically, supporters of net neutrality insist that providers are the ones who may become gatekeepers of the Internet. These people say the openness of the Internet is far too important to be left unprotected by the government. This is a false premise. In fact, the Internet has been an open platform for innovation since its inception, and it has not needed any sort of net neutrality rules from bureaucrats at the FCC. To make matters worse, Congress has never given the FCC the explicit authority to regulate how Internet providers manage their networks. That is why the new rules represent an unprecedented power grab by the unelected Commissioners at the FCC. In fact, current law states: ``It is the policy of the United States . . . to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.'' That is the law today. The FCC has lost this fight already in the courts. Last year, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's 2008 attempt to impose net neutrality in the Comcast v. FCC case. The court ruled that the FCC was acting beyond the reach of its congressionally provided authority and cautioned that regulations should be imposed only with explicit congressional direction. This was validation that regulatory agencies cannot make policy without congressional direction. Rather than back down, however, the FCC doubled down. The current FCC order tries an even more expansive interpretation of the law than was used in the Comcast case. FCC Commissioners inexplicably claimed the agency can impose heavy-handed Internet regulation under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. This was a section of the law that was intended to remove regulatory barriers to broadband investment, not to raise them. If the FCC's legal theory is left unchallenged, the FCC will have nearly unbounded authority to regulate almost anything on the Internet. It is Congress's role, not the FCC's to determine the proper policy framework for the Internet. Over time, and aided by the current administration, regulators throughout the government have gradually tried to seize increasing control over so many facets of American life. It is time for the Senate to stop this overreach. We write the laws of this country, not unelected bureaucrats. That is why we are here today. Thanks to Senate majority leader Harry Reid, former Senator Don Nickles, and the late Senator Ted Stevens, one of the tools Congress has to stop rogue agencies is the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to review a rule before it takes effect and even to nullify that rule if Congress finds it is inappropriate, or if it overreaches, or if Congress itself hasn't delegated this power to an agency. As Senators Reid, Nickles, and Stevens said at the time of this bill's passage, ``Congressional review gives the public the opportunity to call the attention of politically accountable, elected officials to concerns about new agency rules. If these concerns are sufficiently serious, Congress can stop the rule.'' We believe the concern about the FCC's net neutrality rules is sufficiently serious to warrant the consideration of Senate Joint Resolution 6, the disapproval resolution Senator McConnell and I introduced to nullify the FCC's net neutrality order under the Congressional Review Act. The House has already passed its version of the resolution, and we need only a majority of Senators to send this bill to the President's desk. Even a net neutrality supporter, Senator Olympia Snowe, who has authored net neutrality legislation, is a cosponsor and supporter of our resolution today. While Senator Snowe and I don't agree on the need for a net neutrality law, we are in complete agreement--and she stated it beautifully--that Congress, not the FCC, should determine what the proper regulatory framework is for the Internet. If the Senate does not strike down these regulations soon, they will go into effect on November 20, further jeopardizing jobs in this fragile economy. I guess you could say that it will allow more lawyers to be hired, but more innovators? Probably not. That is not the mix we need to assure that our economy will get back on track in this country. Studies indicate that net neutrality rules could significantly affect our economy. If net neutrality reduces capital investment in broadband infrastructure by even 10 percent, it could cost our country hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade. We must preserve the openness of the Internet as a platform for innovation and economic growth. We must keep the competitive advantage that we have in this country for innovation. The last thing we ought to be doing is putting restrictions on our providers, when many countries that are also advanced in this area are not doing the same thing. So when we go to global competitiveness, we are putting our companies at a disadvantage. Why would we do that? We must stop the job-killing regulatory interference by our government today in so many areas, and we can start right here, right now, by keeping the Internet free, voting for this resolution of disapproval, and saying to the regulatory bodies in this town: Congress must authorize a delegation of authority for your agency to pass rules, and especially when Congress is in disagreement with those rules. This is a key policy decision for our body. We need to step up to the responsibility that Congress has. Our Constitution divided the powers between three branches of government. If Congress doesn't stand up for its one-third of the powers of this government and lets unelected bureaucrats run over our prerogatives, we will become a weaker branch, and our government will become weaker for it. We need to have three equal branches of government, and that means each branch must fulfill its responsibilities under the Constitution. Congress must delegate its authority explicitly for a rule to be made. That is the way the Constitution intended for Congress to fulfill its job as the elected representatives of the people of our country. The House has passed this resolution. I hope the Senate will tomorrow. I hope the people will speak and say that even if you disagree on the basic issue of net neutrality, it is not the right of the FCC to pass sweeping regulations that will affect the economy of this country without explicit authority from Congress, which it does not have. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to come to the floor if they want to speak on this resolution. There is 4 hours, equally divided, and that time is now running. I say to my Republican colleagues that we have quite a list of those who want to speak. They must know that the time will run out in about 3\1/2\ hours now. I ask them to contact me if they wish to speak. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I know the Senator from Minnesota has been waiting to speak, and I certainly will yield to him. I would like to be recognized after he speaks to answer some of the concerns that were raised by the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, I yield up to 15 minutes to the Senator from Alaska.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Wyoming.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on this side?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Sixty?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I have been looking for a time when the floor was open to refute some of the comments and concerns raised earlier on the Senate floor. I want to start by taking on a comment that was made by the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Franken, who said YouTube started above a pizzeria in 2005 and sold for $1.6 billion 2 years later to Google, and that wouldn't have been possible without net neutrality. Well, Mr. President, I must point out that we didn't have net neutrality in 2005. We haven't had Federal regulation of the Internet in this country such as we have seen during this last year put forward by this administration. In fact, YouTube and Google were both created in a marketplace without net neutrality regulations. Other online successes--Facebook, Hulu, Twitter, and new devices such as the Apple iPhone and Amazon Kindle--all happened without net neutrality regulations. These are innovations that have changed communication patterns not only in our country but around the world as well. So we have had these innovations without the heavy hand of government. It is very interesting to hear the debate on the Senate floor because we seem to hear that net neutrality is something that will keep the Internet open. The opposite is true. It is beginning to put the clamps on the successes that we have had by having an open Internet. All these companies they are talking about needing net neutrality to come forward and blossom and grow are the companies that have done exactly that without net neutrality regulations. What we should do is assure that we don't put a blanket over the Internet and start saying to everybody who has a new idea or a new product or a new service provider: You better go to the FCC before you go forward with that or you could be in jeopardy. You could be penalized. You could be thought to have an ``unreasonable'' product on the Internet because we don't know yet what is reasonable. We just know you have to be reasonable because we have a new regulation now that says you must be reasonable, without any definition of what this FCC-- which had no authority to go into this area--is going to determine is a ``reasonable'' product that would not interfere with anything else. Mr. President, we haven't had net neutrality before. All the successes I hear talked about in this debate have happened without the heavy or the light hand of government stopping the originality and innovation that has marked the success of our country. Earlier, Mr. Kerry, the Senator from Massachusetts, said the Internet made the 1996 Telecommunications Act obsolete 6 months after it was enacted. But if the 1996 act did not sufficiently address the Internet, thus making it obsolete, how can that same law be the genesis and basis of the FCC's assertion it has the power to regulate the Internet? We have to have one or the other, and it is our assertion the FCC did not get specific authority to regulate the Internet that is required for Congress to give it in order to make rules in this area. So Senator Kerry can't have it both ways. He can't say the Telecommunications Act was obsolete but it is also the basis of these new restrictive regulations. Senator Kerry sent a ``Dear Colleague'' letter to everyone in the Senate asking them to vote against this resolution. What I think Senator Kerry was saying in that letter is that net neutrality is not a regulation of the Internet because it is just a regulation of the onramp. In other words, we are not trying to support the FCC regulating the whole Internet; they are just doing the gateway, they are just doing the onramp. Well, that was the position the FCC took when they made this regulation. But we can't argue that net neutrality is not regulation of the Internet because the Internet service providers are the only onramps to the Internet. It is a misleading statement to say that just regulating the onramp isn't regulating the Internet. The Internet is the entire global network of millions of computer networks. It uses the Internet protocol standard to interconnect with each other. Internet backbone providers and last-mile Internet service providers serve as the foundation of the Internet. So they are the foundation. Web sites and services such as e-mail and voice-over IP, or VOIP, allow users to communicate on top of the foundation. The Internet is the whole online ecosystem put together. We can't have the edge without the core and vice versa. The onramp is as much a part of the information superhighway as are the cars traveling on it. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell put it well in his dissent from the open Internet order that we are discussing today. He said: To say that today's rules don't regulate the Internet is like saying regulating highway on ramps, off ramps, and pavement don't equate to regulating the highways themselves. Mr. President, if we are going to say the FCC can regulate the onramp--and that is the first heavy hand of government that is going to start controlling and making decisions about what is reasonable and what is not--that means businesses are going to have to go to the FCC and say: Mother may I. If they have an innovative product, that is going to cost the consumer more because they will have had to go and hire lawyers to go to the FCC to get prior approval or it will delay the product getting out to consumers, possibly letting a European service provider that doesn't have these kinds of barriers get ahead of us. Internet technology is the basis of hundreds of thousands of jobs and products in our country. We are in a crisis right now. We all know we have 9 percent unemployment and that our economy is even dead in the water. So we have to do something to jump-start the economy. The last thing we want to do is put a blanket on it to make it harder for it to come back. I don't think anybody in this country with any common sense is going to say we have a thriving economy right now. So it does defy common sense to say we are going to allow regulations Congress has not approved and that Congress has not authorized the regulator to make, knowing it will have the effect of either freezing or delaying the innovation that has been the hallmark of the success of the Internet and technology in our country. There are several organizations that have banded together to ask that people vote for the resolution today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from, among others, Americans for Tax Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Hispanic Leadership Fund, and Americans for Prosperity.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I would like to just wrap up, and then I will yield back the rest of our time and we can close this debate because our vote is going to come tomorrow. I just want to summarize what we have heard today. I just heard the distinguished Senator from Washington State say that without net neutrality we would have more expense to consumers. I really do view this in a different way because I view the potential delay, the regulatory processes, the hurdles that are going to have to be overcome for any kind of preclearance to put a new product on the Internet, gatekeeping for innovation--that is what, in my opinion, is going to increase the cost and cause delays if not freeze many of the innovations that have occurred in our open Internet system. We now have, because of the FCC's ruling, the requirement for reasonable standards for access to the Internet. There is no definition of ``reasonable.'' I heard the Senator from Minnesota say we need net neutrality in order for Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to be able to grow and prosper. Those entities have grown and prospered-- without net neutrality regulations. They have grown and prospered because we have had free and open access to the Internet. We and our competitors and our businesses that compete overseas have had open and free access. That has been the beauty of the success of the Internet. Now we see government coming in and saying: You have to be reasonable in what you offer. So if there is a major dump of millions of pages onto the Internet and it is going to slow down, for instance, a hospital network offering rural health care on an emergency basis or some kind of video-streaming that is going out, we have to be able to let the providers have the judgment and let the marketplace work. If there is a problem it was not pointed out by the FCC when they decided to intervene in the Internet among 134 pages of regulations with just 3 paragraphs about possible problems, all of which concluded with the rules that are in place today. This is clearly a problem that isn't there, which is being manufactured in order to put another government regulation on the books. When the Senator from Massachusetts said this order doesn't regulate the Internet, just the gateways or the on-ramps, that doesn't hold water because if we regulate the on-ramp, we are regulating the Internet. We are causing companies that are providing broadband to not have control of their networks but instead will now have to go before the FCC to justify a new product or service that will give emergency access or quicker access for users who need to have that kind of access. I hope the Senate will say the FCC has extended beyond any authority Congress has given them, and I hope we will stand for our prerogative in Congress to make the laws and only have regulations come out when we delegate specifically to an agency to put out rules in a particular area, which has not happened in this case. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution. I yield the floor.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield up to 5 minutes of our time to the Senator from Oklahoma.