You may not know the name James Byrnes! But, for me, he comes to mind. Mr. Byrnes once declared: The nearest approach to immortality on Earth is a government bureau."
James Byrnes served as a governor of South Carolina, United States Senator, a Supreme Court Justice, and U.S. Secretary of State, aside from other government positions. Yes, you read that right!
So, by virtue of his experience, Mr. Byrnes knew a thing or two about the difficulty of shrinking the size of government.
Admittedly FCC Chairman Brendan Carr hasn't served in as many high-level government positions as James Byrnes. No one else has. But Carr has served in key FCC positions long enough – as General Counsel, Commissioner, and now Chairman – to understand that there are plenty of legacy regulations remaining in the FCC's rule book that are no longer necessary. Not only are they no longer necessary, but many of them, considering the dramatically changed telecommunications and media environment since they were adopted, impose costs and burdens that affirmatively harm consumers and competition.
I have criticized a few actions taken by Chairman Carr, for example, the use of the agency's transaction review process to impose extraneous conditions not unique to the transaction in approving the Skydance – Paramount CBS transaction, and the imposition of what appears to be an unwarranted forfeiture on Telnyx without fair notice of what standard it was expected to meet.
But, on the whole, I applaud the way that Chairman Carr is forging ahead in the DELETE, DELETE, DELETEproceeding and others to remove bunches of regulations that should no longer exist and, frankly, should have been eliminated years ago. For example, yesterday the Commission proposed to eliminate nearly 100 outdated, no longer necessary, broadcast rules using the Direct Final Rule process. The public will have 10 days after Federal Register publication to offer comments regarding any of the proposed rules. Absent the submission of a "significant adversecomment," the proposed elimination of the rule will occur. If the Commission determines that a "significant adverse comment" has been submitted, then that particular rule will go through the normal notice and comment process.
In a 1995 Recommendation, The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), of which I have served as a Public Member and now Senior Fellow, suggested that agencies use the Direct Final Rule process to more quickly eliminate unnecessary regulations "in all cases where the ‘unnecessary’ prong of the good cause exemption is available…." On many occasions since then, to little or no avail, I have urged the FCC to consider employing the process.
So, I heartily commend Brendan Carr for taking the initiative to do so now. There will still be an opportunity for public comment when the Direct Final Rule process is employed, and, if experience proves there is a need, there can be adjustments to ensure that non-frivolous substantive objections are properly considered.
Shortly before becoming FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, speaking at a Free State Foundation event, declared: “We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation and job creation.”Considering all the obstacles, including the time and energy expended to reverse the then-existing mandate regulating Internet service providers as public utilities, Chairman Pai made a good start. But now Chairman Carr has truly fired up the metaphorical "weed whacker" in a way that looks to make meaningful progress in the cause of eliminating costly, burdensome, unnecessary regulations.
He may not have eliminated a government bureau. But I suspect that James Byrnes would give Brendan Carr credit for what he's doing on the deregulation front.
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