After losing the battle against net neutrality rules at the Federal Communications Commission, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has taken his fight to Congress. Today, Pai asked the House of Representatives to strip the FCC of funding it needs to enforce net neutrality rules.

"Congress should forbid the Commission from using any appropriated funds to implement or enforce the plan the FCC just adopted to regulate the Internet," Pai said in prepared statements for an FCC budget hearing. "Not only is this plan bad policy; absent outside intervention, the Commission will expend substantial resources implementing and enforcing regulations that are wasteful, unnecessary, and affirmatively detrimental to the American public."

Pai is one of two Republicans on the FCC. The three-member Democratic majority voted in favor of the net neutrality order. The decision reclassified broadband as a common carrier service and imposed net neutrality rules that prevent Internet service providers from blocking or throttling content or prioritizing content in exchange for payment.

"This is a costly endeavor for the agency, one that will end the permissionless innovation that has spurred the Internet’s explosive growth up until today," Pai said, going on to call it a "lose-lose proposition for companies and consumers."

Wheeler, who also testified at the hearing, defended the rules. Responding to claims that net neutrality rules don't address any actual behavior by ISPs, Wheeler pointed out that Comcast was caught interfering with BitTorrent traffic in 2007 and that Verizon last year planned to throttle its users who have unlimited 4G data plans until Wheeler objected.

The FCC's budget request is appropriate, Wheeler also said.

"Since 1994, our financial return to the government has equaled 13 times our combined operational costs," he said. "For every dollar generated by the FCC, our agency uses only eight cents for its operations."

Wheeler described how the latest spectrum auction raised $41 billion, including $20 billion to reduce the country's deficit and billions to fund a nationwide public safety communications network.

"To build on this progress, and fulfill our statutory responsibilities, the Commission is requesting $388 million in general spending authority derived from Section 9 regulatory fees for our overall non-auction costs, up from $339.8 million in FY 2015," Wheeler said. "In addition, we are requesting an auctions cap of $117 million, an $11 million increase from last year, as well as the transfer of $25 million from the Universal Service Fund (USF) to cover our costs for that program. These are well-considered requests that reflect necessary operational demands and the unique circumstances of this budget cycle."

The fate of the budget request is still up in the air, but Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) last week said it "raises eyebrows, particularly when American households continue to do more with less in this stagnant economy."