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Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

> The resolution also would bar the FCC from ever enacting similar consumer protections. It now heads to the House.

This is honestly the most frightening thing to me. Even if prevailing opinions change, they can't bring these regulations back in the future? This seems...majorly problematic.

Edit: The Ars article [1] expands on this a bit further:

> The Senate today used its power under the Congressional Review Act to ensure that the FCC rulemaking "shall have no force or effect" and to prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future.

I'm not well versed in the Congressional Review Act and what its invocation means here, but I've seen commentary to the effect of "The FCC won’t be able to try again, even if Congress gets back on board".

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/senate-votes-to-...

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Congress can do pretty much anything it likes - within the Constitutional powers, of course. But FCC can't make regulation that Congress just shut down again, at least not until the Congress changes its mind. Otherwise it'd be useless for the Congress to intervene at all - Congress shuts down one set of rules, and then FCC enacts another one which is pretty much the the same? Of course, if Congress changes their mind they can pass legislation that enables FCC to make such rules again.

I am pretty sure that is standard language for any legislation that is changing an administrative rule for an agency.

If they didn't include that language, the FCC could just re-implement the rule tomorrow. The language saying they can't enact similar protections means that it would take a new act of congress to allow the FCC to pass a rule like this.

Congress can still make changes, they are just preventing administrative changes. It's not weird or scary, it's how the US system works, the executive branch is given authority by legislation and legislation can take it away.

> Once a rule is thus repealed, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) also prohibits the reissuing of the rule in substantially the same form or the issuing of a new rule that is substantially the same, "unless the reissued or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of the joint resolution disapproving the original rule" (5 U.S. Code § 801(b)(2))

The CRA allows the rules to be recreated if given explicit authorization from a law by congress. So they can be put back in place, just not as easily.

That's encouraging at least. Obviously this doesn't make the ruling any less serious, but it doesn't sound as permanent as most of these articles make it sound.

It's as permanent as you can make law without amending the Constitution.

[EDIT]: (deleted)

Sorry, I misread that s/he was talking about the bill rather than the administrative rule change that happened first.

No, Congress is removing the FCC's authority to make rules on this topic. It would take an act of congress to give it back.

Sorry, I misread that this was talking about the bill rather than the administrative rule change that happened first.

Responding to your edit, it depends on what the speaker means by Congress being on board.

New legislation can override this resolution. New legislation could completely reconstitute the FCC, or eliminate it entirely.

Not entirely sure how this works, but there could be a new bill that reverses this to allow them. This bill prevents them from independently creating "enacting" similar protections. A future bill could cancel this provision, or enact new protections that could be enforced.

Either way, it is frightening to think about this passing.

This is always something that's baffled me, mostly since it seems totally counter to how the democratic process should work (apart from the fact that it seems totally petty). Does that mean that this resolution would have to be repealed in order for the FCC to make similar policies again? That sounds less like "never enact policies like this" and more like "now it'll take one extra round of voting before new privacy-related policies can be enacted".

Congress cannot make any law that Congress cannot unmake. Congress can, of course, prevent a regulatory agency from doing something, because the regulatory agency's power to make law derives from Congress's delegation of that authority to the agency. (I'll leave aside the discussion of how that's totally unconstitutional.)

Neo-cons seek to make systematic changes like this as their strategy.

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