Freedom Line Blog

If you need another reason to hope for a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate next fall, here you go: a resolution to overturn net neutrality — the Obama Administration’s attempt at a government takeover of the internet — failed today in the upper chamber by a narrow vote of 52-46 (it had previously passed in the House, 240-179).

Of the Republicans who fought the good fight, none put the issue in as sharp relief as Florida freshman Marco Rubio. This a man who gets the bigger picture, as the Daily Caller reports:

“The FCC and the federal government cannot keep pace with the Internet and the technology industries, and the government should not attempt to catch up through regulation or legislation,” said Rubio.

“And that’s an important point. We are asking this government, we are asking this bureaucratic structure which struggles to keep pace with issues we have been facing for the last 20 years, to somehow keep pace with issues and the technology and the innovations that arrive in the Internet world. Not only do I think that is asking too much, I think it’s impossible.” 

Rubio is right on the money, sounding the same cautionary note that CFIF’s Timothy H. Lee has repeatedly emphasized. America has had no more dynamic sector of the economy in the last two decades than the internet, a development that would have been impossible without a relatively light hand from the federal government. If Washington gets in the driver’s seat, we should expect the same results that have characterized government involvement in everything from health care to postal service to education: lower quality at higher prices with less convenience. It’s a Wi-Fi world and we’re handing off the internet to a dial-up government.