[paul_f]

The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be. The FCC keeps raising the tax rate. 10% of your mobile phone bill now goes to this fund that seems was decided by bureaucrats at the FCC and not by Congress. If the court strikes it down, then Congress will have to step in, which seems appropriate.

[ceejayoz]

> The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be.

Congress could, if they didn't like the regulators' chosen amount, set a new fixed amount with a couple lines of legislation and a vote. Done in a day.

[resoluteteeth]

If Congress chose not to specify it and therefore delegate the decision, shouldn't it be up to them to pass a new law to specify it if needed if they think the executive branch has raised it too much?

Why is this a situation where the supreme court should step in?

[lolinder]

The legal question is identified in the original reporting on the lower court's ruling:

> Oldham said the USF funding method unconstitutionally delegates congressional taxing authority to the FCC and a private entity tapped by the agency, the Universal Service Administrative Company, to determine how much to charge telecommunications companies. Oldham wrote that “the combination of Congress’s broad delegation to FCC and FCC’s subdelegation to private entities certainly amounts to a constitutional violation.”

This certainly seems to me like an important question for the Court to weigh in on. The power to tax is clearly Congress's, but it's not clear that we should want Congress to have the power to delegate that power to anyone they choose.

https://apnews.com/article/rural-access-broadband-universal-...

[readthenotes1]

It could be that the power to lay taxes is granted solely to Congress in the Constitution.

IANAL, so the clarity of Article 1 section 8 may be not what the words seem to say

[drivingmenuts]

It's probably not, but the current administration doesn't want to pay any of the bills for the people producing their food. A penny spent on the less fortunate is one that doesn't go into their pockets.

[lokar]

People always like to complain about unelected (as if any were elected?) bureaucrats.

The president picks the head of the FCC.

Any president could have adjusted the fee. This is all fully under the control of elected officials.

[lolinder]

My complaint with presidential nominees having extensive power is that it moves too much policy to hinge on a single, nationwide election. As we've seen, that can lead to extreme instability versus congressional legislation.