Democrats Eye Building on Infrastructure Bill's Broadband Spend

Democratic senators are actively eyeing how to use a planned $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package to further boost broadband spending beyond the $65 billion in connectivity money included in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (HR-3684) the chamber passed Tuesday. Republicans told us they’re concerned about such an attempt to double-dip on broadband spending given the amount of money they already agreed to allocate via HR-3684 and a set of COVID-19 aid bills. HR-3684 itself still must clear the majority-Democratic House before it goes to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The Senate voted 69-30 to pass HR-3684, with all 50 Democrats voting yes. The 19 Republicans who voted in favor of the bill included Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi and committee members Roy Blunt of Missouri, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska. Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., voted against the package. Wicker and other Republicans failed to attach an amendment that would have allocated $2.5 billion through FY 2026 for 5G wireless rollout on DOD sites.

Vice President Kamala Harris praised Senate passage of HR-3684, saying in a speech “it will mean people in our nation … won’t have to go to” fast-food restaurant parking lots to get Wi-Fi access. A wide range of tech and telecom stakeholders praised its advancement, despite some misgivings with its overall language. They include ACA Connects, the American Library Association, Communications Workers of America, the Competitive Carriers Association, CompTIA, Connect Americans Now, CTA, CTIA, Free Press, Incompas, the Information Technology Industry Council, ITS America, National Association of Counties, NCTA, NTCA, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, Twilio and the Wireless Infrastructure Association.

The Senate immediately began work on the reconciliation package, voting 50-49 along party lines to proceed to Senate Concurrent Resolution 14, a blueprint for the measure. It allocates $83 billion for Commerce priorities through FY 2031. Senate Democrats said those priorities will include “investments in technology.” Democrats are eyeing how they can add back in some of the $35 billion that the Biden administration cut between its original $100 billion broadband proposal and the $65 billion figure the White House settled on with bipartisan senators (see 2106240070), lobbyists told us.

'Big Priorities'

“There’s big priorities” Senate Commerce wants to address with its portion of the reconciliation package, Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told reporters. Additional broadband money will be “part of the discussion.” She has advocated going further in future legislation to address connectivity affordability, arguing that HR-3684’s $14 billion allocation to the FCC to extend and expand the emergency broadband benefit wasn’t enough. Democrats are eyeing whether they can restore the full $50 monthly subsidy in the extended program instead of leaving it at the reduced $30 level a bipartisan group of senators agreed to when they made the infrastructure deal, lobbyists said.

“I’m always interested in expanding investment across America, whatever tool” lawmakers choose to use, said Senate Communications Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., in an interview. HR-3684’s $65 billion for broadband is “a great start” and is the “biggest investment” in connectivity “in our history,” but “we should build on that,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told us. “We have the opportunity in the reconciliation package to invest even more, make the system more complete and provide more access. It’s a historic opportunity.”

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii was among other Democrats who backed HR-3684 despite having reservations about the broadband section’s scope. “We’re going to have a few more bites at the apple” aimed at providing more broadband money, he said.

Thune and other Republicans noted concerns that the Democrats were going to use the reconciliation package to allocate more for broadband. “They’re already doing so much broadband spending” via HR-3684 and other measures, “is it really possible you can plus it up any more?” Thune told us. He cited the Congressional Budget Office’s score of HR-3684 (see 2108050064) as the main reason he voted against that measure.

What's Ahead

PK would support further broadband spending in the reconciliation package, Government Affairs Director Greg Guice said in an interview. The $42.5 billion HR-3684 allocates for an NTIA-administered broadband equity, access and deployment grants program is “a great down-payment” but “not enough to close the digital divide.” The $14 billion for affordability is “amazing,” but HR-3684 doesn’t have a “permanent mechanism to fund that,” he said. “We’re still thinking on whether” that’s something Congress should address via reconciliation or another mechanism.

Guice also believes Congress should consider using reconciliation to enact a “device voucher program” that lawmakers decided against including in HR-3684. PK understood it was supported on a bipartisan basis, so “we would hope that there might be an opportunity to revisit” it via another vehicle, he said.

HR-3684 definitely “came out better than I feared” it would given “some of the rumors of what was potentially going to be included” in its broadband section, said International Center for Law & Economics Innovation Policy Director Kristian Stout. “It’s not a best-case scenario” or “a worst-case scenario. It’s somewhere in the middle.” Lawmakers are “starting to move in the right direction on figuring out how to get people who genuinely don’t have an internet connection or something very substandard” connected, he said. The big problem is the NTIA grants program puts too much priority on ensuring recipients provide capacity for 100/20 Mbps service because that's effectively “reordering the queue of who gets connected, and the people who are hardest hit get pushed back to the end again.”

The Senate was voting Tuesday afternoon on amendments to S. Con. Res. 14. None of the more than three-dozen tech and telecom-related proposals was among those that had gotten votes by our deadline. One, from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, would make it “not in order” for the Senate to consider any legislation that “appropriates or otherwise makes available” broadband funds “to a recipient who currently possesses” money from another federal connectivity program unless 60 senators vote to waive the rule.

Another Lee amendment would similarly make it “not in order” for the Senate to consider any legislation “that would repeal or otherwise impair” the FCC’s rescission of its 2015 net neutrality rules. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., proposes making it “not in order” for the Senate to consider legislation that would “reduce funds” for manned and unmanned aerial systems that don’t have 5G capacity. Capito proposes language to make it the sense of the Senate that “any funds spent” on broadband deployment “must first address building out” infrastructure in unserved areas without access to 25/3 Mbps speeds.