Wheeler Ripped For Partisan FCC

Tom Wheeler

Republican Sen. John Thune blasted Federal Communications Commission FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday for presiding over a more politically partisan regime at the regulatory agency than the last five chairman combined.

During an FCC oversight hearing in the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — chaired by Thune — the South Dakota senator gave a self-described “hard hitting” opening statement, complete with a chart, counting off more partisan 3-2 votes at the five-commissioner agency during Wheeler’s tenure than the sum total of the last two decades, according to a story at
 valuewalk.com.

“Chairman Wheeler has forced 3-2 votes on party-line items a total of 25 times,” Thune said. “To put that in perspective, in three years under Chairman Wheeler the FCC has seen nearly twice as many partisan votes than in the previous 20 years combined.”

Sen. John Thume

Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly have repeatedly expressed their dismay with being “shut out” of the deliberative process under Wheeler virtually since the chairman took the reigns of the agency in 2013. During Thursday’s hearing O’Rielly recalled how Democrat Mignon Clyburn was pressured at the last minute to back out of a compromise with Republicans to expand the Lifeline program earlier this year, delaying the commission’s open meeting until Clyburn eventually got back in line with Wheeler’s bloc of Democrats.

Pai recounted how in a strange rule reversal, Wheeler required all of the commissioners to unanimously agree to change decades-old rules barring broadcasters from owning newspapers in the same market, despite a majority of commissioners supporting a change.

Republican lawmakers got at least one concession out of Wheeler without even having to ask, as they had during numerous hearings before, whether Wheeler intended to follow precedent and leave office in January with the exit of the Obama administration.

“As a certain November event approaches and a new administration is on the horizon, this may be my last appearance before this committee,” Wheeler said. “I will cooperate fully with the new administration to assure a smooth transition at the FCC.”