Pai, Rosenworcel, Carr Questioned By Senate Commerce Committee

Hearing

FCC Chairman AJIT PAI and nominees JESSICA ROSENWORCEL and BRENDAN CARR appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee TODAY (7/19) as the Senate considers PAI's renomination, ROSENWORCEL's return to the Commission, and CARR's nomination to the open Republican seat at the agency.

CARR took questions from Sen. BILL NELSON (D-FL) on how independent he would be from his former boss PAI, and assured NELSON that he would be candid with PAI on the Commission, although NELSON voiced skepticism and was critical of CARR's unresponsiveness when asked to cite an instance when CARR and PAI disagreed on an FCC matter.  NELSON was also concerned about the TRUMP administration's request that CARR be approved for two consecutive terms.

Other issues raised by the panel included E-rate subsidies for school and library broadband, which ROSENWORCEL said she would not vote to cut but about which PAI and CARR avoided committing not to cut funding for the program, frustrating Democrats on the panel (although CARR called it a "critically important" program and PAI called it "worth fighting for"); independence from President TRUMP (PAI, asked if the WHITE HOUSE had been in contact with the FCC over President TRUMP's "fake news" claims, said "I don't believe so" and added that he would not take retaliatory action against a news outlet if asked to do so by the administration); and the allegations that many of the comments in the Commission's docket on rescinding its Net Neutrality policy were generated by bots, possibly from RUSSIA (PAI was noncommittal about how the Commission would deal with that, saying that while there are concerns about the comments' origin, the agency will base its decision on "facts that are in the record").

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