WASHINGTON - More than three dozen senators joined Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) on a letter today urging Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai to abandon his plan to repeal the agency’s net neutrality rules in favor of giving internet providers the ability to freely block or slow down consumers’ access to the internet.

The senators’ letter comes ahead of a Thursday vote by the FCC to dismantle the net neutrality protections. 

“Your plan gives a broadband provider the ability to significantly alter their subscribers’ internet experience,” the lawmakers wrote.  “Once adopted, this proposal will permit that provider to freely block, slow down or manipulate a consumer’s access to the internet as long as it discloses those practices – no matter how anti-consumer – somewhere within mounds of legalese in a new “net neutrality” policy.  …It is a stunning regulatory overreach.”

Joining Nelson on the letter to the FCC Chair were Brian Schatz (D-HI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Gary C. Peters (D-MI), Patty Murray (D-WA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Angus S. King, Jr. (I-ME), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Robert P. Casey (D-PA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jeffrey A. Merkley (D-OR), Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT), Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tom Udall (D-NM), Margaret Wood Hassan (D-NH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Al Franken  (D-MN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD),Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Cory A. Booker  (D-NJ), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Christopher Murphy (D-CT), Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

Text of the letter is below.  To view a pdf of the letter, click here.