Shaking up the FCC

With Republicans taking over congress and the senate new changes are expected, including how the FCC believes that it should act. Switching from Democrat to Republican power in the committee that watch over the FCC Commissioner O'rielly is already planning ahead to how to appease these new overseers, before they have even taken power. He has talked about focusing more on market place competitiveness and changes in stricter oversight. He gathers these views from the past , when in 1996  a republican congress passed the Telecom Act.

This will be an interesting issue to watch progress. It seems that by expecting "tougher scrutiny" and greater reviews of their workings, the republican congress will take more of a congressional control oversight of the FCC than it did with the democratic congress which used a more "deference" way of controlling the FCC. The deference method is tied closely with the bureaucratic discretion because is a way of respecting the committees goals without being directly told what to do. From the start it seems like the congressional control is already working better as before the republicans have even come into their positions of power, the FCC is trying to figure out what they want and how to implement them. However, because they are mobilizing so soon expecting the congressional control method, it doesn't mean that that's the better alternative. It could be because the democrats did not bring the hammer down hard enough to keep them inline, even when they were split on the net neutrality issue. Meanwhile with the new republican congress they are already expecting more oversight on their hearings and closer examination of their efforts, leading them to rewrite  everything that they have on the table. Overall it will be interesting to see if this scared tactic works out to bring the agency and the committee into the better alignment that it seems to be moving toward.