House Commerce Shows Divisions on Lift America Act

House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott, D-Ga., said during a Monday Agri-Pulse event that committee leaders intend to release their own infrastructure plan, including a major rural broadband component. “We’ve got to be smart and develop rural broadband as a centerpiece to move out for rural development because if you don't have rural broadband there, you're not going to have the rural development,” Scott said. A hearing is expected after Easter. President Joe Biden’s advisers are expected to deliver an economic recovery plan to him this week that includes an infrastructure plan involving broadband spending, lobbyists told us.

HR-1848 “will serve as the blueprint moving forward, and it provides us an opportunity to work together in bipartisan fashion to deliver a robust and comprehensive infrastructure package,” said House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J. “I’m hopeful that we can work together to find bipartisan solutions.” He noted the connectivity funding, which includes $80 billion for broadband deployments, $15 billion for NG-911 and $9.3 billion to improve affordability and adoption (see 2103110060).

House Commerce ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington set the tone for Republican criticism of HR-1848, saying it’s a “progressive wish list” that’s “the complete opposite of what will deliver results. It’s more regulations and mandates.” The measure “wastes billions without actually closing the digital divide and even setting rural America back even further,” she said. “We stand ready to engage” if Democrats insert language from a set of 28 broadband bills Republicans proposed in February (see 2102160067).

Republicans “are extremely disappointed we have not been able to reach the same consensus” with Democrats on broadband since that party took the House majority at the beginning of 2019, including that “not a single one” of the GOP broadband proposals was included in HR-1848, said Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta of Ohio. He criticized the proposed NG-911 language, saying he’s not convinced it will “accomplish the goal of an interoperable nationwide 911 network.”

Latta and other Republicans noted concerns that Democrats are seeking new major broadband spending while the FCC lags behind in its work to improve connectivity data collection (see 2102170052). “We’ve made this mistake before, and it appears we could make it again if this legislation proceeds,” Latta said. The FCC launched an online tool Monday for consumers to report their broadband experience (see 2103220050).

O'Rielly, Wheeler

Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told House Commerce he finds HR-1848 “severely lacking” and believes the U.S. broadband “ecosystem can’t handle” $80 billion in federal spending injected in one go. He argued that the measure’s language making 100 Mbps symmetrical the threshold for qualifying for much of the funding “means ignoring the most neglected communities and delaying their ability to access very good and functional broadband today.”

House Commerce should include many -- “if not all” -- of Republicans’ 28 broadband bills in the infrastructure package, O’Rielly said: That “collection of ideas would go a long way towards fixing existing barriers to deployment and allowing broadband providers to meet the needs for Americans without access.”

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler endorsed HR-1848. It would mean “everyone in America can finally have the 21st-century communications services they will need," he said. The $80 billion broadband funding figure that HR-1848 proposes and the FCC outlined in 2017 “remains a rational forecast” of what will be needed to achieve nationwide broadband access.

The $40 billion the FCC has spent on high-cost broadband subsidies over the past decade “produced results,” but USF “failed to insist on future-proof technology” and “establish meaningful standards,” Wheeler said. He criticized Republicans’ alternative broadband package. “You cannot deregulate your way to full” broadband coverage across the U.S., he said.

House Communications Chairman Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and other Democrats defended HR-1848. Republicans are “looking in the rear-view mirror and thinking they see the future," said California Rep. Anna Eshoo. “This bill is all about building out our future.” Doyle argued that the broadband deployment funding proposed in HR-1848 is necessary for rural areas to have a chance of getting 5G. “We both know that if you don’t have dense fiber networks, you can’t have 5G,” he told Wheeler.

“I just find it amazing” that Republicans “seem to be telling their rural constituents that any kind of broadband is better than no broadband at all and that you should be happy to get yesterday’s broadband because right now you don’t have anything,” Doyle said. “If we’re going to keep building networks that are already antiquated by the time we put them in the ground, we’re just setting up people and the networks being built for failure.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., hailed HR-1848 for not making eligible telecom carrier designation a requirement for receiving the money. He plans to soon refile his Expanding Opportunities for Broadband Deployment Act, which would eliminate the ETC designation as a requirement for providers to be eligible for USF (see 2006110063). Wheeler and O’Rielly said they back the coming measure. “It makes no sense to continue ETC as one of” the tests for funding eligibility, Wheeler said. O’Rielly warned that state regulators will likely again oppose the measure and other attempts to eliminate ETC requirements (see 2007070057).