Rancor Rises At The FCC

Partisan warfare has broken out at the once-sleepy Federal Communications Commission, where disputes over Internet subsidies for the poor, robocalls and net neutrality regulations have taken on an increasingly bitter tone.

At an open meeting on Thursday, Republican FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly accused the body’s Democratic majority of trying to force through an expansion of broadband subsidies for low-income Americans before President Obama leaves office.

“It is clear that the majority wants to spend as much as they possibly can without any hint of restraint before a possible change in Administration,” he said.

Though the agency is adversarial by nature — by law, only three out of the five commissioners can come from the same political party — a recent series of controversial items have laid bare the fault lines between some of the commissioners.

O’Rielly also accused unnamed commission leaders of lying to him during a later discussion on a measure to crack down on robocalls and spam texts.

“After 14 months working on this issue, it is clear that this process brought out a new low I have never seen in politics or policy making — which is saying something,” he said. “Along the way, some of us were led to believe that we were working together to find a common resolution. Instead, we were being deceived in order to produce one of the most slanted documents I’ve ever seen.”

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