Gov performance

Elon Musk’s influence over the federal government is extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies in 2023. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial.

The Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act directed the Federal Communications Commission to incorporate maternal health data into its Mapping Broadband Health in America platform. The agency took this task seriously and on June 20, 2023, first introduced this information on the platform, including public data about maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, as well as facts about race and ethnicity, maternal age, rurality, areas with maternity care deserts, and areas with shortages of mental health care providers.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel its October 2024 Porker of the Month for her decision to block funding for Starlink to deploy satellite internet service in hard-to-reach areas of the country. The FCC approved and then revoked SpaceX Starlink’s $885.5 million competitive award under the Rural Development Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

States are using their digital equity plans to demonstrate how successful digital inclusion efforts can advance progress toward other goals, including improvements to civic and social engagement, economic development, education, health care, and delivery of essential services.

Technology Policy Institute President Scott Wallsten believes that federal broadband programs have mostly thrown key economic principles out the window. “And a persistent digital divide is partly the result of that,” he said. Rather than just focusing on the cost of capital or the cost of laying fiber, he said broadband programs should apply economic concepts to "maximize total net benefits" for consumers and also balance trade-offs between supply, different deployment technologies and what consumers want. For example, he said a consumer could consider moving from 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps “a huge

The Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, enrolled more Americans than any previous broadband affordability program in the United States. Despite that success, the ACP faced substantial criticism from conservative members of Congress who saw it as giving away taxpayer dollars to many households that don’t actually need help affording their internet bill. The question going forward is not if the government will subsidize broadband service for Americans, but how. This paper attempts to inform that debate by examining four specific critiques of the ACP:

Let’s discuss the current Broadband Policy State of Play and how the election may affect it. There are four fundamental goals of broadband policy:

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's mission is to build a better-connected world. That work includes connecting everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed Internet service. The Internet for All initiative is historic. As such, we would be remiss if we failed to learn lessons from the recent history of other federal broadband programs. Top of mind are the failings of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to reaffirm its revocation of an award authorizing Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s Starlink to receive broadband deployment subsidies through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).  The Committee seeks information from the FCC to ensure that the Commission followed established processes and is not improperly using the regulatory process for political purposes.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has gone on the offensive and defended itself against possible lawsuits that might claim that the FCC has overstepped its regulatory authority that was granted by Congress.