Senator Ernst Wants To Kill Billions In Broadband Infrastructure Grants For No Coherent Reason
from the pointless-destruction dept
The 2021 infrastructure bill is poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies to the states under a program called Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD). This program has been slow sledding, because America’s broadband maps were absolute garbage, requiring that states work overtime to fix our broadband maps and ensure the money is spent semi-wisely.
Republicans and their friends in the telecom industry opposed fixing our broadband maps, contributing to this delay (like their friends at AT&T and Comcast, they like data that pretends U.S. broadband is competitive, because it props up their false claims that coddling monopoly power is a good thing).
Now key Republicans (like Trump’s new FCC Boss Brendan Carr), are pointing to the delay they helped cause as evidence that the entire program is a boondoggle and should be scrapped.
The money, managed by individual states, is actually very close to hitting state coffers next year. But Senators like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst are calling for BEAD to be shut down because nobody has gotten broadband yet:
“President Biden’s so-called infrastructure program provided $7.5 billion to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and $42 billion to expand broadband. Three years later, just 17 EV stations are completed and not a single person – not one – has been connected to the internet yet. It’s time to pull the plug.”
This may sound crazy, but the U.S. government is big and it takes time to accomplish big things.
The delay in BEAD is twofold: the government wanted to fix its mapping so it didn’t waste money. This is a good thing. The government also wanted to make sure that ISPs that win bids can actually deliver the broadband speeds they promised. This is also a good thing. The Trump administration failed to do this on an earlier rural taxpayer-funded broadband program and it created created a giant fucking mess.
Again, the delays here are because the government was actually trying to do this correctly. And they’re going to get punished by people pretending to care about government efficiency.
Ernst’s home state of Iowa is poised to receive $415.3 million in BEAD grants in the new year. That money will be used to fund things like more reliable fiber connections to schools, libraries, and rural communities long left out of the reach of traditional broadband (thanks, again, to Republican policies that tend to coddle telecom monopolies, penalize the poor, and defang corporate oversight).
It would be one thing if Republicans were genuinely arguing in good faith about saving taxpayers money. But then they’ll turn right around and give Elon Musk a billion dollars to bring satellite broadband to some traffic medians, or give AT&T a $42 billion tax break in exchange for a giant middle finger and 41,000 layoffs. They endlessly talk out of both sides of their mouths on policy.
Republicans voted against these infrastructure improvements. At the same time, Republicans have lied repeatedly to their constituents and tried to take credit for them. Guys like Elon Musk hate subsidies, unless they’re the ones getting subsidized. Republicans profess to hate government inefficiency, then turn around and waste millions of dollars trying to nanny state your porn consumption.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Department of Government Efficiency” will provide limitless cover for corruption and graft here. So I suspect most of this BEAD money will still reach most states, there will just be endless efforts to shift funds away from projects that build out affordable fiber competition, and toward whatever entity or individual does the best job kissing Trump’s ass.
Since states are in charge of the funds how much money gets wasted and redirected will depend on how corrupt your state is, only reinforcing existing state by state disparities on affordable broadband access.
Filed Under: bead, broadband, broadband equity access and deployment, fcc, infrastructure bill, joni ernst, ntia, subsidies, telecom
Comments on “Senator Ernst Wants To Kill Billions In Broadband Infrastructure Grants For No Coherent Reason”
The question is: how much has already been spent?
When you spend big money to build a road, you start with survey and construction plans. It’s boring and may take years but doesn’t cost much. Only then you spend a big share of the money on road construction, that will last for decades.
Now, if you try to be “efficient” by immediately building without thinking of a construction plan, you’ve got plenty of useless but very expensive road that will never be opened for the public.
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As far as the EV charging stations goes, it’s the same deal: there’s a lot of infrastructure that has to happen to make those charging stations work. You can’t just plop one down in a former gas station (for example) and have it work.
Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Senator X (R) Wants To Kill [project] For No Coherent Reason
I think most of the news reports and articles written along these lines can be understood very well when one rereads the (removed) Facebook post of (former) Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd during the Texas Freeze of 2021.
A representative quote:
There was a publicity backlash for his callous words. However, there was no real apology and never a response from anyone connected to the GOP that argued this was not the official position of the GOP. And it does explain all the hard work from the GOP to make live miserable for poor people, even if they vote Republican.
Full post and its aftermath can be found here:
‘https://ktxs.com/news/local/colorado-city-mayor-resigns-after-controversial-facebook-post
It's time
I think this translates to “People are going to see benefits soon, so we need to kill the program now or it will be too popular to kill later”. Much like Obamacare.
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I actually never signed up for Obamacare, so you can repeal that, just leave my ACA alone.
This is what Republicans do. “Democrats aren’t building things fast enough, so let’s start breaking things.”
Re: This.
Much like the Conservative Party in the UK, they have no strategy, only soundbites. So they don’t know what they actually need to build or create (a wall! Ha!)
But they need to be seen to be doing something so it’s far easier to tear things down than to actually do the hard work of figuring out how to makes things better.
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It’s conservatism in general. That’s literally all conservatism is. What they’re trying to “conserve” is the hierarchy of haves and have-nots.
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And the Labour Party in the UK. Two examples that spring to mind are Wes Streeting, who has drawn up guidance targeting trans nurses, and Councillor Chris Read, leader of Rotherham Council, who asked the UK Government to no longer house Ukrainian refugees in a Manvers hotel that was the target of racist riots, but has made no alternative provision for their housing, meaning that they are now either on the streets or in detention centres. Those people fled Ukraine to get away from violence only to be met with two different forms of it here. ALPAB (All Labour politicians are bastards).
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Is this one of those things where both sides do it to an extent, the conservatives do it far more egregiously and more often, but conservative voters pretend a false equivalence?
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No, this is one of those things one individual has focused on the ills only of one party and another individual has pointed out that the other party is just as conservative and bigoted. Up to speed now?
The reason to kill CURRENT broadband subsidies is because between Verizon, AT&T and Comcast they have spent less than 0.001% of their subsidies on infrastructure and instead have given 99.998% of the “broadband subsidy” money directly to their CEOs, board members and shareholders.
Literally 100s of BILLIONS of dollars with barely even a single building wired up.
The current “subsidy” system doesn’t have any clawback clauses, so they can (and have)just stuck two fingers up at regulators, take the money and spent it on private jets / underage hookers / drugs etc.
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Throwing around a lot of incendiary hyperbole there, partner. Care to back it up with facts, or are you all hat and no cattle?
Are you saying that states cannot implement clawback clauses of their own, or that the money going to the states cannot be clawed back by the federal government? Inquiring minds want to know!
I suggest we kill billions in funding for the republicans instead, without the GOP guzzling money we could afford so many things!
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Surely we could feed the GOP a more healthy diet, of vegetables and Government Cheese.
We’d need to wean the GOP from their addiction slowly… if they went Cold Turkey just before Christmas, it could get nasty…
So
What are the Odds, that 14 million people are going to get a $25 discount?
10 million?
7 million?
5, only 5.
This has been an OFF/ON thing, back and forth, up and down. Its Who is going to give it to the people NOT to make it Fair.
It wasn’t going to work even if it wasn’t axed by the RNC.
The money was only ever going to go to people telling everyone how’d that totally do the things, but then run into “complications” that never actually achieve the desired results.
If you want internet access for all, you need to kill the telecom monopolies. And everyone with enough neurons to rub together knows that will never happen.
Depends on your point of view
The delay in BEAD is twofold: the government wanted to fix its mapping so it didn’t waste money. This is a good thing. The government also wanted to make sure that ISPs that win bids can actually deliver the broadband speeds they promised. This is also a good thing.
Unless of course you happen to be either:
1) A republican that really doesn’t want for there to be a country-wide program to get people affordable internet access the democrats can point to come the next election, and who believes that the only acceptable welfare programs are corporate welfare.
or
2) A major ISP who doesn’t like the idea of money only being doled out where needed, and really doesn’t like the idea of potential competition in the form of local broadband networks being set up and/or expanded thanks to a large government grant.