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Congress has voted to permanently bar state and local governments from taxing access to the Internet. For 17 years, the ban on Internet taxes has benefited millions of Americans by empowering them to conduct transactions on the Internet free from the fear of additional tax burdens. "This is a tremendous victory for America's Internet economy, and for all of us who participate in this economy", said Institute for Policy Innovation president Tom Giovanetti.

Passage of PITFA as part of HR-644 now "intensifies" S-698 opponents' push to "stave off the attempt" to pass that bill, said IPI president Tom Giovanetti in a statement. S-698 "has never had committee scrutiny on the Senate side and [has] never been subject to amendment on the floor." Senate Republican leaders "must commit to first submitting this legislation to the same procedures, hearings and scrutiny appropriate to any and all legislation, especially since this proposal has serious Constitutional questions," Giovanetti said.

Since 1998, the federal government has prohibited states and localities from imposing such taxes. This has helped Americans from all backgrounds gain access to the Internet. The economic and educational benefits of this policy are vast and immeasurable. It is long past time for Congress to make permanent the ban on Internet access taxes.

Institute for Policy Innovation research fellow Bartlett Cleland slammed the FCC's "mission creep," discussing the Tuesday FCC oversight hearing before the House Communications Subcommittee.

But free-market-oriented IPI said Charter/TWC/BHN should go ahead "with the addition of conditions and concessions." Given the heavy competition in the video marketplace, IPI said, "fears that a post-merger Charter will wield overwhelming market power such that it will be able to quash such competition seems more based in Progressive Era general distrust of corporations than any informed understanding of the current video marketplace and the obvious current trends."

IPI added its voice for ECPA reform, calling the legislation "an urgent and necessary step to uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights guarding against warrantless search and seizure of electronic data."

IPI pressed Congress to overhaul the Electronic Communications Privacy Act with the release Monday of a publication from Bartlett Cleland.

Opponents of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) cited the Tenth Amendment, givings states the authority to determine whether internet gambling is allowed, and assert that proponents are empowering big government. 

Critics say the provision would allow states to harass businesses. "It opens the door to a grotesque expansion of state tax collection authority that is almost certainly unconstitutional, and places mandates upon the states that are probably unconstitutional as well," said IPI's Tom Giovanetti.

Contrary to expectations held by the Adelson group, the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG) and even those who believed that crony capitalism will prevail, Congress decided not to include RAWA in the remaining days of the lame duck session.