Where Are We With the Net Neutrality CRA?
Just last month, the Senate voted to pass a bill that would restore strong Net Neutrality protections using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Now it’s on to the House.
We’ve written about the CRA before — it’s a tool that allows Congress to repeal a federal agency’s decision in a straight up-or-down vote. You might remember when privacy opponents in Congress used it to dismantle the Obama-era FCC’s broadband-privacy protections.
Now we’re turning the tables by using the CRA to undo the FCC’s Net Neutrality repeal, thereby restoring strong Net Neutrality rules. And we need the House to get on board.
Here’s what needs to happen next
So what does your representative need to do right now to support the Net Neutrality CRA?
Simple: They have to sign on to the discharge petition.
A discharge petition is a handy-dandy congressional tool the House can use to force a vote even if the House speaker doesn’t want to bring the bill to the floor. Even though a recent poll shows that 86 percent of the public and 82 percent of Republicans support the open internet, it’s a different story on Capitol Hill. We know we can’t trust longtime Net Neutrality opponent Paul Ryan to let the House vote on this CRA.
But if we can get 218 House reps to sign a discharge petition, we don’t need Paul Ryan. We can bring the Net Neutrality CRA to a vote without him — and we can win.
Some reps have come forward to say they support the Net Neutrality CRA, and that’s great. A lot of them have even “co-sponsored” the legislation. But we need them to take the next step and sign the discharge petition, or the CRA almost certainly won’t make it to the House floor.
It’s not enough to passively support the open internet — we need Net Neutrality supporters in the House to sign the discharge petition and vote yes on the CRA if it moves forward.
That’s what real support looks like.
The discharge petition already has 170 signers, and counting. You can see if your rep has signed the discharge petition at battleforthenet.com/scoreboard.
If they haven’t, give them a call and tell them it’s time to take their Net Neutrality support to the next level.
