Pai would ought to leave the FCC at the end of 2017 if the Senate hadn’t passed President Donald Trump’s request to give Pai a new term. Pai, who has suggested deregulating broadband providers and killing net neutrality rules, received a new five-year term retroactive to July 1, 2016.
The vote split regularly along party lines, with Republicans backing Pai’s re-nomination and most Democrats in disagreement. The tally was 52-41, as not all 100 senators voted. You can see how each representative voted on this Senate web page.
Pai underwent big ratio of votes from 48 Republicans and four Democrats. The four Democratic senators who helped Pai gain re-confirmation were Joseph Manchin (D-W.V.); Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); Gary Peters (D-Mich.); and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). All 41 nay votes came from the Democratic caucus.
Pai’s re-nomination had represented a “fire FCC Chairman Ajit Pai” petition from consumer support group Free Press, as well as opposition from Democrats when debating on the Senate floor last week.
“The FCC always had the American customer back” during the Obama administration, said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee. But Pai was always “a vocal, overly biased, and often hostile opponent of pro-consumer steps practiced by his colleagues under the previous government. And since becoming chairman of the FCC, he has regularly undercut much of the work done over the past eight years,” Nelson said, according to a copy provided by his office.
Today’s Senate vote likely guarantees that Pai will remain the FCC chairman until at least the end of Trump’s current four-year term. While all five administrators must be approved by the Senate, the president alone determines which of the five serves as chair.
Pai wouldn’t certainly serve his entire term through 2021 because authorities generally leave the commission when the presidency changes from one party to another. Pai’s first term on the FCC technically died in June 2016, but the FCC’s rules allowed him to stay until the end of 2017 despite the status of his re-nomination.
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