Al Franken Doesn’t Think Ted Cruz Understands What Net Neutrality Is

This past week, President Barack Obama came out with a statement urging the FCC to protect net neutrality. This in turn prompted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to tweet, “‘Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet.'”

In a video preview from his appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley set to air this Sunday, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), a long-time proponent of keeping an open internet, responded to Cruz’s claim, calling it “completely wrong.”

“He has it completely wrong and just doesn’t understand what this issue is,” Franken told Crowley. “We’ve had net neutrality the entire history of the internet.”

In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Cruz wrote that net neutrality “would put the government in charge of determining Internet pricing, terms of service and what types of products and services can be delivered, leading to fewer choices, fewer opportunities and higher prices.”

“Obamacare was a government program that fixed something that changed things,” Franken clarified for Cruz. “This is about reclassifying something so it stays the same. This would keep things exactly the same that they’ve been.”

As Franken explained, because some of the largest Internet Service Providers or ISP’s have been discussing implanting “fast lanes” so websites willing to pay more — making every other site slower — the FCC would need to impose the regulation in order to keep things the same.

Watch video below, via CNN:

[Photo via screengrab]

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