December 2023

Biden-Harris Administration Approves Louisiana’s “Internet for All” Initial Proposal

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has approved Louisiana’s Initial Proposal for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Louisiana is the first state to reach this important milestone, which will enable the state to move from the planning phase to the implementation phase for the BEAD program—a major step towards closing the digital divide in Louisiana and meeting the President’s goal of connecting everyone in America with affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service.

Quantifying the Impacts of Regulation

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs recently released new rules that will be used to quantify and evaluate proposed new regulations. Many economists have been arguing for this change for a decade and believe that the new formulas are more accurate. There are several important changes to the new scoring methodology, notably that the new formulas give more value to future impacts of regulation. Critics of the new formulas argue that the new regulations are a way to impose high regulatory costs today that are justified by some theoretical future benefit.