Deficit Cutting Fever Threatens Broadband Stimulus Payouts

[Commentary] A proposal by Sen Max Baucus (D-MT) would cut approximately $300 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and $300 million from Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service to help fund extensions of unemployment benefits and other more popular stimulus measures such as -- surprise! -- extensions of various tax credits. (Rep. David Obey (D-WI) would cut the same amount, but as part of the supplemental funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.)

While Feld certainly doesn't begrudge extending unemployment benefits (he does think tax credits are rather worthless for motivating corporate behavior in light of how few corporations end up paying corporate income tax), he absolutely questions the wisdom of pulling funding from stimulus programs that are not only creating jobs now, but helping to transform our future. How far we've fallen from a year and a half ago when then-Administration broadband spokesperson Blair Levin promised that the $6 billion for broadband stimulus was only a down payment for the Administration's investment in broadband infrastructure. Now, with the effort to repurpose the Universal Service Fund for broadband seriously jeopardized by the Comcast vs FCC decision, Congress proposes to trim back available money for broadband even further.