EDITORIAL: Net neutrality will hinder service, raise prices

The Obama administration believes the Internet needs fixing, and that they’re just the folks to do it.

And how is the bureaucracy that brought you Obamcare going to improve the world’s entrepreneurial engine, exactly? By regulating it like a Great Depression-era utility, of course.

President Barack Obama says the Federal Communications Commission needs to “implement the strongest possible rules” so Internet service providers can’t connect customers to some websites — primarily hugely popular ones, such as Google, Netflix and Facebook — more quickly than others.

Last week, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler gave fellow commissioners copies of proposed “net neutrality” rules that would reclassify the Internet as a public utility. The regulations, part of the president’s go-it-alone approach to governance, would do an end-around Congress by applying President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act to the Internet with the same level of control applied to the old Ma Bell monopoly.

Mr. Wheeler, a former telecom lobbyist and one of the president’s leading fundraisers in 2008 and 2012, previously had pushed back on the president’s wishes, preferring more of a “hybrid approach” that would tighten the reins on broadband service providers while giving them plenty of room to enter paid prioritization agreements. The rules introduced last week, however, are much more aggressive than what Mr. Wheeler proposed early last year and are very much in line with President Obama’s wishes.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, one of two congressional committees now investigating whether the White House improperly influenced Mr. Wheeler. Sen. Johnson sent the FCC chairman a letter asking him to explain his decision, as well as produce communication and meeting documents related to the issue.

Also among those speaking out is Ajit Pai, one of two Republican FCC commissioners. When President Obama first floated his ideas on net neutrality, Mr. Pai expressed concern that the president’s plan would needlessly limit broadband investment, reduce competition among Internet service providers, slow the speed and expansion of the World Wide Web and choke off Internet access to rural areas of the country. After receiving a copy of Mr. Wheeler’s proposal, Mr. Pai said the plan “marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet” that “gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works.”

“The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband,” he said. “These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

He added that the plan “saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market” and, as a result, “Americans will have fewer broadband choices.”

If all this isn’t bad enough, it gets worse: The public isn’t allowed to review the proposed rules. Mr. Wheeler has prohibited the disclosure of any of the regulations until after the FCC votes on it later this month. Americans were promised the most transparent administration in history. Now the FCC will have to pass the rules so we can find out what’s in them.

We all know how this is going to turn out. Do you want Washington to do to your Internet access what it did to your health insurance? If not, tell the FCC to back off.