Senators Will Delay Department Of Commerce Nominees Until States Receive Funding.
Washington, DC –Today, U.S. Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) led over a dozen of their Senate colleagues in a letter condemning the Trump Administration’s reckless decision to rescind approval for states to receive their share of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program funding. The BEAD program was created to connect families in the hardest-to-serve communities to high-speed internet and close the digital divide. The Trump Administration’s new guidance rescinded the final approval of three states, including Delaware and Nevada, and forces all states to redo burdensome steps in their processes, hindering states’ ability to connect communities to high-speed internet. In their letter, the Senators committed to blocking all related Department of Commerce nominees until states receive their full BEAD allocation.
Senators Blunt Rochester and Rosen were joined by Senators Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.).
“We write to express our deep concern with the recent guidance the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued regarding the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. This guidance will add needless delay to connecting millions of Americans to high-speed internet, while going against Congressional intent and betraying unconnected Americans in the process,” wrote the Senators. “Until states receive the entire amount of BEAD funds they are owed, including nondeployment funds, we will not consent to expedited consideration of any related Commerce Department nominees on the Senate floor.”
“With three states fully approved and ready to put shovels in the ground and 42 other states having completed or started the process of receiving project bids and selecting BEAD subgrantees, NTIA’s new guidance upends years of work and threatens to delay the program at a critical point… Simply claiming states will be able to comply with NTIA’s new requirements within 90 days does not make it true,” the Senators’ letter continued. “With this in mind, we implore you to provide states with the maximum flexibility possible and ensure states receive the full amount of funding they are owed. Should you fail to do so, we will continue to block the expeditious advancement of all Commerce Department nominees overseeing broadband policy, along with any related nominees.”
The full text of the letter can be found HERE and below.
Dear Secretary Lutnick:
We write to express our deep concern with the recent guidance the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued regarding the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. This guidance will add needless delay to connecting millions of Americans to high-speed internet, while going against Congressional intent and betraying unconnected Americans in the process. Until states receive the entire amount of BEAD funds they are owed, including nondeployment funds, we will not consent to expedited consideration of any related Commerce Department nominees on the Senate floor.
Established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the BEAD Program was created with the express statutory intent to close the digital divide, with requirements for states to fund projects that bring high-speed, reliable broadband to 100 percent of states’ unserved areas. Instead of establishing a nationwide, competitive grant program like the deeply-flawed Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, Congress created BEAD to allow states to decide how best to fulfill the goal of 100 percent connectivity and reach the hardest to serve locations in the nation.
With three states fully approved and ready to put shovels in the ground and 42 other states having completed or started the process of receiving project bids and selecting BEAD subgrantees, NTIA’s new guidance upends years of work and threatens to delay the program at a critical point. States were on the eve of awarding grants and beginning buildout, and your decisions to rescind approvals will needlessly delay connecting rural America to essential services. Under this Administration’s new guidance, states will be required to rewrite their plans, redraw their maps, reopen project bidding, and reselect subgrantees under entirely new selection criteria, a process that could delay connecting Americans many months or even years. Simply claiming states will be able to comply with NTIA’s new requirements within 90 days does not make it true.
Moreover, this guidance injects unnecessary federal overreach in state plans, allowing D.C. bureaucrats to overrule state broadband offices’ decisions on how best to serve their constituents. States are already working with significant limitations, facing high numbers of unserved locations, limited funding, and geographies that make it hard to build out and reach rural communities. States know how they can best serve their own communities. The United States is made up of vastly different geographies, climates, topographies, and environmental factors, and certain technologies have advantages and failures across those factors. What works in one state may not work in another, but that should be up to the states themselves to determine. Federal overreach is misaligned with explicit Congressional intent to have this be a state-led program. Your failure to allow states to decide how to best serve their communities is unacceptable and contrary to the law.
Additionally, this Administration’s decision to create a non-statutory prioritization on the “cheapest” technology is a betrayal of states, Congress, and Americans who have waited for years to be connected to high-speed broadband. NTIA’s new guidance is short-sighted, prioritizing the “cheapest” technology, rather than what Congress intended: scalable, reliable investments that will serve communities for decades to come. Congress did not intend for this program to sell rural Americans short and provide them with unreliable, intermittent service at speeds they may already have access to today.
Without high-speed, scalable broadband, advances in technology will increasingly consolidate in cities and suburbs, leaving behind rural areas. The failure to connect rural America will only serve to widen the digital divide and leave rural Americans further behind in the face of an increasingly digital world that relies on high bandwidth applications. Often the largest barrier to building industry and economic activity in rural communities is the lack of high-speed, reliable broadband.
With this in mind, we implore you to provide states with the maximum flexibility possible and ensure states receive the full amount of funding they are owed. Should you fail to do so, we will continue to block the expeditious advancement of all Commerce Department nominees overseeing broadband policy, along with any related nominees.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this urgent matter.
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Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the United States Senate where she serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.