At CPAC on Friday, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist told National Review’s Jay Nordlinger that the Federal Communications Commission’s new regulations on the Internet will cost Americans as much as $16 billion in new taxes.

The conservative tax crusader explained how the Obama administration’s new rules on ”net neutrality” — where they deem the Internet “a public utility, like a water company” — contain a massive tax increase on the American people.

The whole series of taxes attached — state, local, federal fees attached to anything that’s a public utility — it’s about $16 billion, according to the PPI, which is a liberal group,” Norquist said. “Yeah, it’s a tax increase, it’s extremely dangerous. It’s a very bad idea.”

“There are different ways to get there, and there are different ways to define it,” he continued. “But what the Obama administration is doing — that they call net neutrality — is actually claiming that private-constructed, private-owned, and competitive cable companies are a public utility — and will be regulated and taxed that way.”