Commerce Secretary Raimondo to testify before the Senate on broadband infrastructure funding implementation

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will testify February 1 before Senate appropriators about how to implement the $48 billion in broadband dollars that the infrastructure law slated for her department. The session will take place before the panel’s Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee, which Sen Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) chairs. Shaheen was one of the lead negotiators who put together the law’s $65 billion for broadband, in tandem with Raimondo and Sen Susan Collins (R-ME), who also sits on this subcommittee. As appropriators, these senators are now tasked with determining what resources to give the department and its National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which will helm the infrastructure law’s broadband investments and is currently on a hiring spree. Shaheen wants to ensure broadband funding is “distributed as intended,” she said. “There is bipartisan determination in Congress to enhance our high-speed internet capacity, and I believe we can continue to get important work done here.”