To have stood in the way of the needless expansion of the welfare state while being the minority party is no small feat.
The Senate Commerce Committee was supposed to mark up a bill today that included funding for web welfare, but the committee scrapped those plans late last night, leading Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and committee chairwoman Maria Cantwell to blame Republicans for their failure to advance the bill.
The Affordable Connectivity Program began as an “emergency” program during the pandemic and was transformed by Democrats into “infrastructure“; now many want to turn it into a permanent part of the welfare state. It provides a $30 per month subsidy for internet service to qualifying households.
The ACP is prone to fraud, and the subsidy is prone to industry capture, with internet-service providers spending millions to lobby for more funding. The Biden administration has described the program as a “key component of Bidenomics” and has sought its expansion to cover more households.
Most Republicans, including Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, opposed the extension of the ACP, which ran out of funding at the end of May. The Republican Study Committee budget on the House side also opposed ACP funding.
The bill that was supposed to be marked up today was supposed to be about renewing the FCC’s authority to auction off spectrum, an authority that lapsed in 2023 and is crucial to the FCC’s mission as an agency. But Democrats insisted on including ACP funding in the bill, along with other progressive priorities.
Cantwell’s outrage at the bill’s failure made clear what really mattered: ACP spending. “We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Sen. Cruz said ‘no,'” Cantwell said. “He said ‘no’ to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones — including more than one million Texas families.”
Schumer, similarly, said that Cruz was serving “wealthy and well-connected corporations at the cost of working Americans who are struggling to get by.”
That claim is risible, given that wealthy and well-connected corporations loved the ACP. Charter Communications (market cap: $41 billion, annual revenue: $55 billion) paid at least eight different outside lobbyists a combined total of $420,000 in the first quarter of this year to secure more ACP funding, in addition to millions spent on its own lobbying. Charter has received $3 billion through the program since it began on an “emergency” basis in May 2021.
T-Mobile (market cap: $208 billion, annual revenue: $79 billion) and Verizon (market cap: $168 billion, annual revenue: $134 billion) have received about $1 billion each. They also lobbied hard for the program’s extension.
Reporting from Roll Call describes the ACP as “rural broadband subsidies,” which it is not. The ACP was never restricted to rural households, and about 85 percent of beneficiaries were in urban areas.
The FCC spun the results of its own survey to make the expiration of the ACP look worse than it really was. Four out of five ACP beneficiaries already had internet service before the program existed, and many are using the subsidy to buy a second internet service, the survey found. According to enrollment data, more beneficiaries use the subsidy for mobile internet than for fixed internet.
There is no reason why any Republican should have supported the extension of a Bidenomics program during Biden’s reelection campaign. Cruz and the other Republicans who opposed this bill should wear Democrats’ indignation as a badge of honor. To have stood in the way of the needless expansion of the welfare state while being the minority party is no small feat.