Ranking Member Nelson lashes out at FCC chairman for scrapping E-rate report

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, tore into Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for scrubbing a commission progress report on the E-rate, a program that helps provide broadband connections to schools and libraries. “Your unilateral action last week to quash a staff report providing an analysis and progress report of the agency’s E-Rate modernization efforts shows a troubling disinterest in the facts,” Sen Nelson wrote in a letter to Chairman Pai. “The facts are these: the revitalized E-Rate program is now connecting more schools and libraries in every state with faster and better broadband. More students in more places, including in more rural areas, can now get access to the tools they need for a digital education, which is essential if our nation’s students are to compete in the 21st century economy.”