The Senate recently confirmed five nominees to the Federal Trade Commission, the nation's most important consumer protection agency. It is the most dramatic change in leadership at the agency since the first group of commissioners was sworn in in 1915.

The new commissioners already have their hands full, as polls show a public increasingly restive about privacy and data security in the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica incident.

For decades, the FTC has been the lead federal agency for online privacy and data security, with more than 500 cases under its belt. The Federal Communications Commission's December decision to declassify internet service providers as common carriers (part of a larger effort to rescind the old 2015 net neutrality regulations) means that the FTC now has comprehensive authority to police the privacy practices of all of the major internet players. The FCC's recent action rolled back a 2015 decision that inexplicably stripped the FTC of its authority to police ISP online activity.

This is especially important for a public increasingly skeptical about the practices of certain internet companies. Several of these companies are under FTC enforcement orders for failing to protect consumers' data. Now the new agency leadership will determine whether the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica incident represents a second set of breaches that could result in trillions of dollars in damages, according to some commentators.

The FTC has other arrows in its quiver, including new enforceable transparency requirements on all ISPs, which are now required to make detailed disclosures about their services.

In 2015, the FTC recovered $40 million from TracFone for selling "unlimited" mobile data plans that throttled customers — or cut them off entirely — without proper disclosure after they used a certain amount of monthly data. Other companies that hid the ball from consumers have paid far higher prices.

One would think Congress would be finding ways to support and burnish the FTC's powers given the rising tide of public concern about onlineprivacy. But through the Congressional Review Act, which just passed the Senate, being used now in an effort to reinstate the old net neutrality rules, congressional partisans could impede the FTC's privacy, transparency and pro-consumer policing powers.

Net neutrality rules are widely supported — including by the ISPs — but the 2015 rules were a clumsy approach, as would be the current CRA effort to reimpose them. Among other things, they would strip the FTC of its ability to create uniform online privacy rules equally applicable to ISPs and big technology companies, which is essential to protecting consumers. Congress can stop the grandstanding and develop bipartisan legislation that would both fortify the FTC's authority to enforce meaningful privacy rules and enact permanent net neutrality rules that stop any company from interfering with internet traffic.

At a minimum, Congress should not impede the efforts already underway by the FTC, which has a storied history of careful, bipartisan work protecting consumers, to police the privacy practices of the entire internet ecosystem.

It's time for our elected leaders to enact the needed reforms to protect consumers. If not, they should get out of the way and let the expert agencies do so with the tools already available.

Nancy Libin is the former chief privacy and civil liberties officer at the U.S. Department of Justice and is a partner at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C.