Senate Decides Millions of Rural Homes Don't Deserve Next-Generation Broadband

The Senate cut $2 billion for rural broadband from the stimulus over the weekend, reducing from nine to seven. Two billion dollars budgeted for partial loan guarantees could have empower tens of billions of private capital to flow into rural next-generation broadband. Tens of billions of dollars means millions of rural homes getting connected. And there are projects ready to start deploying within weeks all across America creating thousands of jobs if we could get this support through the gears of government quickly. We can't just be thinking about how to reduce government spending; we need to find new mechanisms to spend those dollars in smart ways. Because the way things stand now we're on the verge of taking away the opportunity to get connected with next-generation broadband from millions of rural homes, and Daily can't see how that's either good policy or smart politically.