Hey RUS: What Happened to Loan Guarantees?

When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act back in February $2.5 billion was allocated to the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service to distribute as loans, grants, or loan guarantees to stimulate broadband deployment. When RUS released its Notice of Funding Availability a couple weeks ago it included the ability for rural broadband projects to apply for loans, grants, and loan/grant combos. This begs the question: whatever happened to those loan guarantees? Why didn't RUS listen to Congress and include them as an option? Why did RUS choose to ignore this important component of their funding toolkit? The short answer is likely because while RUS already has a loan guarantee mechanism in place no one's ever used it before for two primary reasons: the 80/20 guarantee isn't enough to entice private lenders to open their coffers, and it takes just as long to get approved for a guarantee from RUS as it does a direct loan.