Senator Ernst Wants To Kill Billions In Broadband Infrastructure Grants For No Coherent Reason

The 2021 infrastructure bill is poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies to the states under a program called Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD). This program has been slow sledding, because America’s broadband maps were absolute garbage, requiring that states work overtime to fix our broadband maps and ensure the money is spent semi-wisely.

Republicans and their friends in the telecom industry opposed fixing our broadband maps, contributing to this delay (like their friends at AT&T and Comcast, they like data that pretends U.S. broadband is competitive, because it props up their false claims that coddling monopoly power is a good thing).

Now key Republicans (like Trump’s new FCC Boss Brendan Carr), are pointing to the delay they helped cause as evidence that the entire program is a boondoggle and should be scrapped.

The money, managed by individual states, is actually very close to hitting state coffers next year. But Senators like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst are calling for BEAD to be shut down because nobody has gotten broadband yet:

“President Biden’s so-called infrastructure program provided $7.5 billion to build a nationwide network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and $42 billion to expand broadband. Three years later, just 17 EV stations are completed and not a single person – not one – has been connected to the internet yet. It’s time to pull the plug.”

This may sound crazy, but the U.S. government is big and it takes time to accomplish big things.

The delay in BEAD is twofold: the government wanted to fix its mapping so it didn’t waste money. This is a good thing. The government also wanted to make sure that ISPs that win bids can actually deliver the broadband speeds they promised. This is also a good thing. The Trump administration failed to do this on an earlier rural taxpayer-funded broadband program and it created created a giant fucking mess.

Again, the delays here are because the government was actually trying to do this correctly. And they’re going to get punished by people pretending to care about government efficiency.

Ernst’s home state of Iowa is poised to receive $415.3 million in BEAD grants in the new year. That money will be used to fund things like more reliable fiber connections to schools, libraries, and rural communities long left out of the reach of traditional broadband (thanks, again, to Republican policies that tend to coddle telecom monopolies, penalize the poor, and defang corporate oversight).

It would be one thing if Republicans were genuinely arguing in good faith about saving taxpayers money. But then they’ll turn right around and give Elon Musk a billion dollars to bring satellite broadband to some traffic medians, or give AT&T a $42 billion tax break in exchange for a giant middle finger and 41,000 layoffs. They endlessly talk out of both sides of their mouths on policy.

Republicans voted against these infrastructure improvements. At the same time, Republicans have lied repeatedly to their constituents and tried to take credit for them. Guys like Elon Musk hate subsidies, unless they’re the ones getting subsidized. Republicans profess to hate government inefficiency, then turn around and waste millions of dollars trying to nanny state your porn consumption.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Department of Government Efficiency” will provide limitless cover for corruption and graft here. So I suspect most of this BEAD money will still reach most states, there will just be endless efforts to shift funds away from projects that build out affordable fiber competition, and toward whatever entity or individual does the best job kissing Trump’s ass.

Since states are in charge of the funds how much money gets wasted and redirected will depend on how corrupt your state is, only reinforcing existing state by state disparities on affordable broadband access.