Sen. Cruz Demands Answers on VP Harris’ Broadband Boondoggle

Instead of connecting Americans, Internet Czar Harris and admin created billion-dollar slush fund to saddle BEAD with left-wing agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is demanding answers about a nearly billion-dollar administrative slush fund that the Biden-Harris administration took from a program meant to help connect Americans to high-speed Internet.

The administration withheld the money from its signature $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to build a bureaucracy that has saddled States with unlawful and extraneous left-wing central planning mandates, resulting in massive program delays.

In 2021, Vice President Harris was tapped to take the lead in directing the administration's efforts to improve internet access nationwide. Despite Vice President Harris's proclamation in April 2021 that "[w]e can bring broadband to rural America today," the BEAD program has failed to connect a single household to broadband over the last three years.

In his letter, Sen. Cruz outlines how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) diverted a large sum of the program's funding-$849 million-to impose excessive administrative burdens on the States in pursuit of the Biden-Harris administration's extreme left-wing social policies, including rate regulation, unionized labor requirements, climate change regulations, technology mandates, and other extralegal policies. These unauthorized directives from NTIA have stalled the program and inflated the costs of expanding internet access, which Sen. Cruz previously highlighted in his Red Light Report published last year.

As Sen. Cruz wrote in his letter to NTIA:

"In 2021, Congress enacted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, establishing and funding the $42.45 billion BEAD program to bring internet access to all Americans-an unprecedented expense of taxpayer dollars for internet connectivity. Despite National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) three-year-old clear statutory mandate to bring the internet to the unserved, your agency has failed to connect a single American.

"What NTIA has done with the money so far is create a nearly billion-dollar slush fund to "administer" the program. Specifically, NTIA has withheld $849 million in BEAD funding for its own budget. This appears to have enabled NTIA to impose excessive administrative burdens and pursue the Biden-Harris administration's extreme left-wing social policies, without legal authority[…]

"NTIA has sought to misuse its BEAD authorities to impose rate regulation, unionized labor requirements, climate change regulations, technology mandates, and other extralegal policies on the States. This has continued despite Congress repeatedly reminding NTIA that Congress gave it no statutory authority to use BEAD for any of these social goals. NTIA has also begun enforcing these left-wing priorities on States through a convoluted bureaucratic process requiring States to submit two different sets of detailed proposals for BEAD funding review and approval. This protracted process all but guarantees there will be no BEAD-funded infrastructure development this year. Indeed, as of the writing of this letter, almost 30 states-including Texas-have not received final approval of their second proposal.

"As I warned in my Red Light Report last year, NTIA also created unnecessary delays and inflated the costs of expanding internet access by insisting that only a narrow set of technologies for connecting American households was permissible. While NTIA appears to have changed course and adopted my recommendation that BEAD be more technology neutral, no doubt a significant improvement, NTIA now claims BEAD isn't a connectivity program. Instead, it's a 'jobs program.' It appears, however, that the only 'jobs' created from BEAD are for government bureaucrats.

"BEAD's hard-earned taxpayer dollars should be spent as Congress authorized-to bring internet access to all Americans-not held hostage to central planning edicts or left-wing priorities."

As part of his investigation into the massive delays in the BEAD program, Sen. Cruz requested a breakdown of administrative funding allocated and utilized by the NTIA, as well as information regarding the approval or denial of proposals received by NTIA.

Read the full text of Sen. Cruz's letter HERE.

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https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2024/8/sen-cruz-demands-answers-on-vp-harris-broadband-boondoggle