In recent weeks, there seems to be a competition to make the FCC more responsive, and to mandate that, before it adopts any new regulations, it take into account the costs of the proposed regulations and the burden that they place on those being regulated. The Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee adopted a bill (The FCC Process Reform Act of 2011) that would, if adopted by the full House and the Senate, require that the FCC, before adopting any new regulations, take several steps to make sure that regulations were really necessary (see a summary of House bill here). Before adopting any rule, the Commission would have to survey the marketplace, determine that there was a market failure or specific consumer harm, then take into account the cost of complying with regulations before the new regulations are adopted. The proposed legislation would also require that the FCC adopt deadlines on many FCC actions ("shot clocks"), perhaps in response to a Study commissioned by the House Committee looking at the length of time that many FCC proceedings take. The FCC adopted its own proposals for making its regulations less burdensome by reviewing the continuing need for existing rules, following the President's call for all agencies to take such action. The FCC report, after making the seemingly obligatory bows to broadband adoption that the Commission seeks to foster, talked about many of the same issues that the Congressional committee seemed to be addressing - deleting unnecessary regulation wherever possible. What changes will these efforts bring to the FCC?
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