Congress Should Remove Most of FCC's Duties, CEI Says

The FCC should do a comprehensive review of its regulations, axing those that no longer serve consumers, and Congress should rewrite the Communications Act "to eliminate most of the FCC's current duties," the Competitive Enterprise Institute said. The small-government public policy group's Shrinking Government Bureaucracy report Wednesday recommended Congress consider "folding a much smaller FCC" into a different arm of the U.S. government, such as the Commerce Department. "With a handful of exceptions, the FCC continues to regulate as if it were 1996 -- or, in some cases, 1934," CEI said, pointing to media ownership rules. CEI said that instead of relaxing legacy cable-TV rules in the face of cord cutting, the agency did the opposite with its set-top box and over-the-top-as-MVPD rules proposals. It said due to FCC rules, "many of the most valuable airwaves cannot be licensed by wireless providers." The report recommended changes to or abolishing Commerce, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the SEC and some others. The FCC didn't comment.