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Lawmakers like Fred Upton are FCC hypocrites
August 08, 2025
Although hypocrisy in politics is common, this type of hypocrisy with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does indeed surprise me because of the high degree of flip-flopping that is being done by certain politicians.
House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) is outraged at the FCC’s decision to go forward with new network neutrality rules. Now, I have absolutely no issue with his anger at that specific topic. I personally agree with net neutrality but many do not and I respect that.
What I take issue with is thequote by Uptonabout the White House needing “to get its hands off the FCC.” Uptownalso made it a pointto state that all of this net neutrality talk was bad for the Internet business since “providers need certainty so they can move forward with their business models.”
If he wants the President to stay out of FCC affairs, he seems to have changed this belief since President Obama took office. Previously, Upton pushed hard for support from President George W. Bush when Upton helped create the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which passed in 2006.This gave the FCC additional powerto punish broadcasters who showed indecent material on radio and television.
Upton even attended thecelebrated signing of the billwith former President George W. Bush. During his time at the White House, President George W. Bush gave Upton a nickname of “Freddie Boy.”
Therefore, at this point in time, Upton seems to enjoy giving the FCC additional power and is quite happy at the President publicly supporting his plan. But maybe Upton simply wanted President Obama to stay out of the debate because of his so-called belief that the government should have no role in deciding the rules for the broadband industry.
Yet, since 2000, has their been a politician that has had his hands more on the FCC than government official Fred Upton? As we discussed above, Upton was one of the central figures in giving the FCC additional power in punishing broadcasters.
In 2004, Upton was one of a number of politicians asking the FCC toreview the TV industry and see“whether a la carte pricing would be technologically and economically feasible.” Did he forget about the need to give TV providers that “certainty” for their current business models? Don’t get me wrong, I love that Upton did this but going by his reasoning today, this is not something that should have ever been brought up if he was looking to give the industry “certainty.”
Then in 2006, Uptownopenly pushedfor the passage of the Communications OPPOrtunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act) which made it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around the country by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national systemoverseen by the FCC. Again, this is now the second time that Upton put forward bills that gave the FCC additional power.
Or how about the fact that Upton helped write a draft of bill that would havecreated a “two-tiered”Internet back in 2006that was backed by the FCC. In the mid-2000’s, ISP’s were pushing lawmakers to allow for them to create a “two tier system” which would allow them to charge content providers different rates depending on the amount of traffic or bandwidth they require.
BellSouth’s Chief Technology Officer executive William L Smith,openly discussed the potentialto charge a premium to websites for prioritizing downloading by noting that Yahoo could pay to load faster than Google. AT&T and other telecoms wanted to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet and also charge websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the Internet.
Again, who helped write this draft?
Generally speaking, those against net neutrality tend to claim that net neutrality advocates are crazy for thinking that ISPs could try to create a two-tier Internet. Yet, as we can see, they have already tried to do exactly that.
The list goes on with numerous actions by Upton who pushes for more and more government “regulation” when it comes to causes that he supports such regulation.
By the way, Upton wouldn’t have money riding on these decisions, would he? I mean, I can’t think of a bigger conflict-of-interest if he did. Of course he does. According toGawker and the 2013 Personal Financial Disclosure statements:
In fact, as theInternational Business Times reported, “Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan and Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon — received more money from cable-industry interests than almost any other members of Congress, campaign finance records show.”
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