Sept. 22, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting Republican leaders in both houses of Congress for reportedly failing to include language in the continuing resolution that would block the transition of U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system:
“It is being reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have surrendered U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system in negotiations with the Democrats to fund the government. If true, it is now clear that Harry Reid never actually left the majority leader’s office and continues to call all the shots on what gets funded. Because of this tragic failure of leadership, multinational corporations and foreign powers will now dominate Internet governance for the rest of time in an unaccountable monopoly, and one day, it will be used to censor Internet content. And there will be nothing the U.S. can do about it.
“It is truly ironic that an issue which unifies the GOP, can be tossed aside because the minority in the Senate threatens to shut down the government. If reports are true, the ultimate conclusion is that the GOP wields far more power when the Democrats control the Senate and they are forced to unify around conservative principles for political campaign purposes. The current Majority in Name Only is hardly worth defending when the Democrats and the corporatists win every battle.
“On the House side, if the Speaker allows the transition to occur when the Obama Administration clearly ignored the previous defunds of the giveaway, then his entire call to restore Article One powers are not worth the paper they were printed on. Should the Senate pass a deal that allows the giveaway, the only recourse is for the House of Representatives to simply say no. A vote for the continuing resolution is a vote to surrender the Internet to Google, Facebook, China, Russia, the United Nations and who knows who else. We will mourn the day we gave this away, and Republicans will have been the ones who rubberstamped it.”
“The good news is that the negotiations in the Senate are reportedly not complete and this course is not irreversible. I pray that the reports being leaked are erroneous as the very freedoms that have made the Internet successful are at stake.”
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 106 or at media@limitgov.org to arrange an interview with ALG experts including ALG President Rick Manning.
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