An Argument for Disbanding the Federal Communications Commission

By Nate Norris

In a January report titled Disbanding the Federal Communications Commission, American Enterprise Institute fellow Mark Jamison argues in favor of disbanding the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC, in his view, has failed to keep up with the evolving communication environment, and the resulting mission drift has led to more politicized decision-making.

Created in 1934, the FCC was given the tools to oversee government-protected telephone monopolies and manage the scarce spectrum for a number of broadcasters. Essentially, they were meant to ensure that early telephones and radios did not bleed into one another’s signals. These economic and technological conditions no longer exist, and the FCC is not equipped with the tools necessary to tackle the present communication market’s intermodal competitions and rapid innovation:

As its original mission has faded, the FCC has become increasingly politicized, aligning with shifting partisan agendas rather than exercising independent expertise.

The FCC was built around transparency and nonpartisan decision making. An eBook created by the FCC to assist other countries’ developing telecommunications has the following positions on regulatory action and transparency.

Transparency means that the process of arriving at regulatory policies and specific ruling is open, consistent, and predictable.

If the regulator is tied closely to the incumbent government, changed in government can introduce an element of uncertainty which heightens investment risk, and can serve potentially to deter future investment.

The FCC long ago abandoned any semblance of partisan agnosticism. Combined with long-term mission drift, it has left the Commission with little directive other than those supplied to it through political agendas.

With the communication features that created the need for the FCC no longer existing, the Commission’s relevance declined. Rather than portending the agency’s dissolution, this has led to the FCC engaging in unpredictable regulatory action; at times abandoning previous positions in favor of current presidential and congressional preferences.

During the Obama administration, the FCC repeatedly catered towards beliefs and ideas advocated by President Obama rather than expert opinions. This dynamic led the FCC to serve as an extension of the executive’s influence. As a result, some drafts were never disclosed to the public while others were given to Republican commissioners as little as three weeks until they were voted on.

This is especially perverse when you consider that the chairman of the FCC is responsible for hiring the agency’s thousands of careerists, experts, and his own personal staff, while each commissioner only employs a small personal staff of about five aides. This means the chairman can devote significant resources to crafting regulatory proposals that align with his or her partisan agenda, while the minority commissioners must scramble during a compressed timeline to even understand what they are voting on.

Consumers and communication providers are faced today with regulations that are partisan, opaque, and unpredictable. This unpredictable environment reduces trust in the FCC and disincentivizes investment in the telecommunication market.

As it currently stands, the growing telecommunications environment has transformed the FCC into a partisan tool for enforcing speech regulations, stifling competition, and delaying innovation. While the existence of the FCC was initially justified, benefitting consumers by unleashing competition through innovation requires a toolkit the Commission does not currently possess. The creation of a new framework, as AEI has argued, would move to efficiently allocate these tools in a new communications oversight body.