Net Neutrality CRA Supporters Eye Post-Election Lame Duck for House Vote Push

A vote on the CRA “won’t happen” before the elections “because we're only going to be back here” this week, House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., told us just before the chamber began its weeklong Yom Kippur recess. “I don’t think we're going to be back here in October at all. We're going to have to get it done in the lame duck.” Pre-election House action on the CRA would have been unlikely even if the chamber were in session for part of October since a discharge petition aimed at forcing a floor vote on Friday had 177 of the needed 218 signers, telecom lobbyists said. That’s the number it had after Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., signed on in July (see 1807170048).

The House and Senate Commerce committees' leaders told us they are hopeful the post-election environment will conversely be better for reaching a legislative compromise on net neutrality, though the CRA would still loom large. Democrats have “been trying to politicize” net neutrality “from the very beginning,” said House Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.: “They predicted the internet would come to a screeching halt” if the FCC rescinded the 2015 rules “and all their doomsday dire predictions haven't quite come to fruition.” The “door remains open” for Democrats to be involved with legislative work on a net neutrality bill originally drafted in 2015 that returned as a discussion point last year (see 1506040046 and 1707310066), Walden said: “I’m open to having those discussions after the election if they’re serious about” a compromise.

“I hope at some point there’s going to be a thawing or softening on the Democrats' side" on net neutrality but “they’re continuing to push the CRA plan and that’s not going anywhere,” said Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune, R-S.D. Thune collaborated on the 2015 draft bill that Walden resurrected in House discussions. “Do they want a solution or do they want the issue? It seems at the moment they want the issue,” Thune said. The Senate passed its version of the CRA in May 52-47 with support of three Republicans (see 1805160064).

'Conscience' Votes?

The focus of the CRA push remains “largely on” getting other House Republicans to join Coffman as discharge petition signatories, with “a lot of meetings with Republicans planned” through the end of September, said Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy fellow Gigi Sohn. “I’d expect by early October, there will be some more signatories on the discharge petition” since “there are an awful lot of members who are seriously considering” signing on. A communications lobbyist who follows Democratic lawmakers questioned CRA supporters’ potential for success given 17 House Democrats still haven’t signed the petition and “none of them are feeling pressure” to join.

Policy Director Matt Wood said the House CRA also remains a top priority for Free Press, though he acknowledged there’s “only so much time left before the end” of this Congress. “We’re obviously in the final months here, even if we do think the lame duck is a time when [the CRA] can still pass,” he said. “We’ll have to move that needle more quickly than we have in recent weeks.” There’s still more than a month left before the election and “nobody’s given up yet,” Sohn said. “This is far from a lost cause.”

Doyle and others told us it’s hard to know how a lame-duck CRA push will fare given uncertainty about the election’s outcome, including whether it will result in Democrats winning a House majority. Generic congressional ballot polls conducted since the beginning of September give Democrats a lead of 4-12 percentage points over the Republicans. “Who knows?” Doyle said: “Obviously, there will be a lot of incumbents” who may lose re-election “and we’ll see how they” stand on the CRA once the House reconvenes in November.

Pressure on individual House GOP members to support the CRA will "diminish greatly” once they return for the lame duck precisely because they will no longer have to fear immediate voter wrath, said American Action Forum Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Will Rinehart: “For some voters, this has been an issue” in the campaign, he said. Once the next Congress convenes in January, “there could be increased pressure to wrap in” net neutrality legislation “with a potential privacy bill,” since California's SB-822 law would take effect in 2020 if Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signs it, Rinehart said. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and others have been pushing Brown to sign the law by Sunday's deadline (see 1809180024).

“It could cut either way,” with GOP incumbents who lost re-election potentially feeling free to “vote the way they feel instead of bowing” to internal GOP leadership pressure to oppose the CRA, as has been the case since introduction in December, Doyle said. How Republican incumbents will stand on the measure “really depends” on whether they lost and what their plans are, Sohn said. If an incumbent lost re-election, “what does he have to lose” by supporting the CRA, she asked. Re-elected incumbents may “feel they have less to worry” about from voters and may be “less willing to defy” GOP leaders, Sohn said.

The lame duck is always a “weird time,” Wood said. “Motives and emotions could be all over the place.” Plus, "the current political environment is so wild and unpredictable,” Wood said.