Posts Tagged: "Senator John Thune"

Last week the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing to conduct oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Although there was the typical overblown bickering over the FCC’s action on net neutrality rules taken in recent months under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai that one might expect, much of the day’s hearing focused on the poor quality of current broadband coverage maps employed by the FCC in distributing subsidies as well as the need to improve broadband deployment to reach millions of Americans living in rural communities.

In his opening remarks, Ross noted that he had been a consumer of various forms of data published by various agencies within the commerce department. He seemed attuned to the importance of data collection and dissemination, noting that 40 percent of publicly disseminated data from all federal agencies comes from the Department of Commerce. With experience operating businesses in 23 countries, Ross was confident in his ability to negotiate foreign trade agreements to the benefit of the American economy. “I know directly what’s good and what’s not good about trade policies in other countries,” Ross said. He added that he was neither pro-trade nor anti-trade but rather pro-sensible trade, which he defined as being supportive of trade deals which were good for American workers and businesses.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 12th, members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation convened for a hearing on a notice of proposed rulemaking recently issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The hearing, titled How Will the FCC’s Proposed Privacy Regulations Affect Consumers and Competition, did much to talk about the potential effects of the FCC’s increased oversight of broadband Internet service providers even as partisan viewpoints among committee members were exposed.