Harris Was Put in Charge of the $42.5 Billion ‘Internet For All’ Plan. Where is it? Rick Moran
We should be used to the idea by now that the Biden administration does not exist in the same time frame of the universe as the rest of us. You might recall the $7.5 billion set aside in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to build 500,000 EV charging stations across the country. As of June, exactly eight charging stations had been built.
Amazingly, in that same Act, Congress authorized the Commerce Department to create an “Internet For All” scheme, which was supposed to bring broadband internet to everyone in America at an affordable price by 2030.
“It is going to help our kids and our business to succeed in the 21st century,” Biden said in his address on April 29, 2021. “I’m asking the vice president to lead this effort because I know it will get done.”
How’s that “broadband for all” rollout working out for ya, Kamala?
Would it surprise you to discover that not a single customer has been hooked up to broadband internet under the program in three and a half years?
“The program has collapsed under the weight of red tape imposed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,” said Americans for Tax Reform in August. “NTIA required states to submit multiple rounds of dense paperwork to even qualify for the funds they were given by Congress and has only recently started approving state plans for how to spend the money.”
Where’s Harris on this? Like the border, Harris is on the “ghost payroll,” as unions might call it. She’s listed as ramrodding the initiative but is nowhere to be found when it comes to the actual work entailed to see the project through.
Nearly three years on and 21 states – accounting for more than 57% of Americans – have yet to be approved. Under Harris’s leadership, the majority of Americans will be lucky if their states’ plans are approved by the third anniversary of the bill becoming law. If the paperwork takes so long, will they ever actually build anything?
The BEAD program also requires that most of the work be completed within five years of the law taking effect, meaning most of the projects to reach rural, unserved areas will blow past that deadline at the current pace. Harris’s leadership or lack thereof on broadband may result in a trillion dollars of inflation with nothing to show for it.
The Wall Street Journal details the massive red tape the administration and Commerce Department have created that prevents states from getting the money.
States must submit plans to the Commerce Department about how they’ll use the funds and their bidding process for providers. Commerce has piled on mandates that are nowhere in the law and has rejected state plans that don’t advance progressive goals.
Take how the Administration is forcing providers to subsidize service for low-income customers. Commerce required that Virginia revise its plan so bidders had to offer a specified “affordable” price. This is rate regulation.
“To put those obligations on small rural providers is a hell of a roadblock,” said Brent Christensen of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance. He said none of his 70 members would bid on any of these broadband contracts. “Most of our members are small and can’t afford to offer a low-cost option.”
There are also the usual DEI mandates.
The Administration has also stipulated hiring preferences for “underrepresented” groups, including “aging individuals,” prisoners, racial, religious and ethnic minorities, “Indigenous and Native American persons,” “LGBTQI+ persons,” and “persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
I’m sure that sometime before 2040, most of the money will be spent, and rural customers and “underrepresented groups” will have their internet. Unfortunately, most of the forests in the U.S. will have to be sacrificed to create all that paper needed to authorize everything.
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