Senate Broadband Compromise Met With House Qualms

As the House debates taking up the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal in tandem with Democrats’ partisan spending plan, lawmakers who work on telecommunications and technology issues used Aug 23's House Rules Committee hearing to outline their specific grievances with how Senate negotiators structured the $65 billion in broadband funding —complaints that are likely to pop up in other forms later this Congress. House Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ) told the Rules Committee that the infrastructure bill’s broadband title only “marks the beginning of a renewed fight to close the digital divide” and warned of “real concerns” about the details, such as the fact that Senate negotiators chose to slash a pandemic-era monthly subsidy (the Emergency Broadband Benefit) to help low-income consumers afford internet from $50 to $30. He also expressed worries about provisions in the bill that would let the Defense Department “scuttle” Federal Communications Commission auctions, saying such a carve-out is “bad policy and it decreases the value of the auction unnecessarily.” Committee Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) criticized parts of the bill’s broadband provisions, even though many Senate Republicans helped author them. She complained the Senate plan “does not target funds for deployment to fully unserved parts of America” and “risks wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer money.” (The Senate bill does prioritize getting grant money to unserved areas of the country before underserved ones based on forthcoming FCC maps, although the Senate text allows for a small portion of each “unserved” area to already have some internet connectivity.) Pallone’s concerns, in particular, could sway future House debates even though neither he nor Rep McMorris Rodgers stands poised to change the substance of the Senate infrastructure deal at this moment.