Republicans Furious as FCC Chief Refuses to Testify on Net Neutrality

Cue the Benghazi references. Any decorum around Washington's net-neutrality debate has evaporated.

A day before the Federal Communications Commission is set to enact sweeping rules that would reclassify the Internet as a telecommunications service. Republicans delayed a House Oversight Committee hearing on net neutrality scheduled for Wednesday, citing FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's "refusal to testify."

"So long as the chairman continues to insist on secrecy, we will continue calling for more transparency and accountability at the commission," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said in a joint statement. "Chairman Wheeler and the FCC are not above Congress. This fight continues as the future of the Internet is at stake."

Chaffetz had called for the hearing to investigate whether the White House improperly cajoled the FCC into adopting the tough net-neutrality rules it favored—reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. The FCC has indicated that Wheeler, a Democrat, will agree to testify at a later date after the vote.

Some Democrats and net-neutrality proponents have rolled their eyes at the accusation, suggesting it amounts to another GOP conspiracy theory akin to partisan probes in recent years of Fast and Furious, the botched gun-smuggling operation, and an attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Minutes after the hearing postponement was announced, Credo Mobile, a progressive telecom service, shot out a statement blasting the net-neutrality hearings as a partisan farce.

"Today's hearings are just the latest episode of House Republicans' long-running IRS-Benghazi-death-panels clown show," said Becky Bond, political director and vice president of Credo. "Nobody should be fooled: Republicans in Congress have one goal, and that's to maximize Big Telecom's profits at the expense of equality for Internet users."

Not to be outdone, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, condemned Title II as a "regulatory nuclear option" during a subcommittee hearing of the House Commerce Committee.

"What the FCC is going to vote about tomorrow is probably 'net nonsense,' " Rep. Joe Barton added.

But the aggression has not been limited to the halls of Congress. Three blocks from the Capitol, a poster attacked Wheeler as a "boot licker."

The sparring reflects a growing reality that the net-neutrality debate likely isn't going anywhere after Thursday's vote. Republicans are eager to paint it as another example of executive overreach by the Obama administration, akin to other recent actions on immigration and Cuba.

But Democrats see the issue as a political win, too. That was on full display Tuesday when Hillary Clinton, the likely 2016 presidential front-runner—who has shied away from taking specific policy stances on controversial issues spanning from Keystone XL pipeline to surveillance reform—emphatically declared her support for the FCC's proposal.

"I would vote for net neutrality because, as I understand it, it's Title II with a lot of changes within it in order to avoid the worst of the utility regulations," Clinton told a Silicon Valley conference on women in technology.

The FCC is expected to vote 3-2 along partisan lines on Thursday to adopt regulations that would block Internet service providers from halting or slowing traffic to websites. Several groups, including telecom giants such as Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast, have vowed to sue over the rules.

Kaveh Waddell and Sarah Mimms contributed to this article.