Senate Democrats Unsated by Reconciliation Broadband Bucks

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell of Washington and other chamber Democratic leaders told us they haven’t signed off on the House Commerce Committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act budget reconciliation package because of what they consider an underwhelming amount of money for broadband. Senate Republicans we spoke with appeared unified with their House colleagues in opposition to the language.

House Commerce advanced telecom language from the package Monday and Tuesday largely along party lines after hours of sometimes rancorous debate. The package includes $10 billion for next-generation 911 tech upgrades, $4 billion for the FCC’s emergency connectivity fund and language to authorize an FCC auction of at least 200 MHz of spectrum on the 3.1-3.45 GHz band. The panel hadn’t approved a proposal Tuesday afternoon to allocate $1 billion to fund a new FTC privacy bureau. Those sections of the bill drew limited attention earlier Monday (see 2109130056).

“We’re still in negotiations” with House Commerce on telecom funding, Cantwell said. “We’re just going to have to keep working on that." Congressional Democratic leaders set a Wednesday deadline for the House and Senate committees to finalize their reconciliation recommendations for the budget committees to consider in assembling the package. Any broadband money in the measure would supplement the $65 billion for connectivity in the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (HR-3684).

“We’re clearly still behind the eight ball with our House colleagues in understanding how important affordability is” in efforts to close the digital divide, Cantwell said. She and other Democratic senators sought up to $35 billion for broadband via reconciliation in late August, including $20 billion for deployment and affordability programs (see 2109020072). The Senate Democrats’ draft reconciliation ask, like House Commerce’s proposal, sought $10 billion for NG-911.

Senate Democrats “have significantly more” in their reconciliation proposal “for remote learning, for devices and for affordability,” said Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M. There are “ways for us to come together,” but he plans to advocate for the Senate broadband proposal to prevail in talks with House Democrats. “There has to be an emphasis on ensuring that 100% of the country is connected with fast, affordable internet," he said.

Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., supports Cantwell’s “approach” in pressing for the Senate broadband approach to prevail in reconciliation talks. “The Senate proposal has more” on connectivity than the House is seeking and “our goal has to be universal access to affordable broadband,” he said.

Democratic leaders seem intent on “plussing up a lot of” their infrastructure funding priorities via reconciliation beyond just connectivity and “I just don’t think that’s going to be a strategy that’s going to get them any support over here among” centrist members of the Senate caucus “who’ve already expressed concerns about the size of the bill,” said Senate Communications ranking member John Thune, R-S.D. HR-3684 “was a bipartisan, very carefully negotiated” measure and Democrats “need to think long and hard before they try to go down the path of trying to renegotiate" that spending.

Any broadband money in the reconciliation package “would break the agreement that we have with the White House” on “issues that were covered” in HR-3684, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who led bipartisan work on that measure’s connectivity section. The deal means connectivity money should be “settled and not relitigated” via additional legislation, she said. “That was crystal clear.”

House Markup

House Commerce voted 31-26 to advance the reconciliation measure’s ECF section. The committee voted by voice to approve a substitute version of the section from Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., that would allocate $500,000 for the FCC to do program oversight. It would shorten the timeline to spend the full $4 billion by one year, through FY 2030. Language in the modified ECF, NG-911 and spectrum sections would bar entities the FCC designates as national security threats under the 2020 Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act (see 2003170004).

Welch and other Democrats defended the need to extend ECF’s life beyond the eventual end of the COVID-19 pandemic and supplement the initial $7.17 billion Congress appropriated in March via the American Rescue Plan Act. ECF has “made the difference for lots of families” in improving broadband affordability, though the FCC hasn’t yet issued the first round of program funding commitments (see 2109100076), Welch said. He believes it’s important Congress ensure affordability after having already “spent considerable money” to aid broadband deployment.

House Commerce voted down three GOP amendments to the ECF section along party lines. The panel voted 32-23 against one from Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia that would bar ECF money from going to “support a school that teaches critical race theory.” Carter, Commerce ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and other Republicans claimed their constituents were raising concerns that public schools were going to make CRT, aimed at teaching U.S. history through the lens of racism, a central part of the curriculum.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and other Democrats criticized Republicans for seeking what Doyle described as a “red herring” in Carter’s amendment. It’s a “gotcha amendment” aimed at “trying to create this hysteria that somehow we’re indoctrinating kids in school” with a curriculum that it’s unclear “any school in the country” is using, Doyle said. The debate took “a bad turn” when Republicans chose to inject their CRT claims, said Rep. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina. “It’s a distraction” and “simply divisive.”

Commerce later voted 32-25 against an amendment from Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., that would nix the additional ECF money and 32-25 against one from Communications ranking member Bob Latta, R-Ohio, to repurpose the funds for deployments in rural areas lacking access to 25/3 Mbps. The “urgent need” ECF money is “no longer necessary” as it was earlier this year, Latta said. Additional ECF funds would incentivize unnecessarily keeping schools closed and would cause students to be “even further behind” in studies, Walberg said.

NG-911

Debate over the NG-911 language turned heated before Commerce voted 31-25 to approve it. The panel approved by voice vote a substitute amendment from Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., that would extend the timeline to spend the $10 billion. It would halve what a proposed Public Safety NG-911 Advisory Board would receive, to $10 million. It’s “unacceptable” that most 911 call centers are using much of the same technology that was in placed when the national emergency number was established in 1968, Eshoo said. Congressional NG-911 Caucus co-Chair Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said the language has “improved” since its inclusion in the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s (Lift) America Act (HR-1848), but he’s “disappointed” committee Democrats chose to rush work on the measure by including it in the reconciliation package.

Committee Democrats and Republicans criticized each other over an amendment from Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, that would have barred entities that “made any efforts” or acted “to defund or eliminate law enforcement” from receiving the NG-911 money. "You can’t vote to defund or eliminate your law enforcement and also ask American taxpayers to help you upgrade your 911 services to reach these same first responders," Johnson said. Doyle and other Democrats called the proposal a distraction. The committee rejected it 32-25.

Commerce voted down 31-25 a proposal from Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Va., to require a proposed NG-911 Cybersecurity Center within NTIA’s 911 Implementation Coordination Office to be located in an area of economic need in Appalachia.

Commerce moved quickly in considering the spectrum auction language, which it advanced 31-26. The committee approved a substitute from Doyle that eliminates a proposed Future of Telecommunications Council to provide recommendations on how to ensure U.S. leadership in developing standards for 6G and other wireless technologies. Doyle said the language would improve upon a similar authorization in HR-3684 that he said constitutes “bad policy” because it “improperly puts other agencies in a leadership role when it comes to spectrum auctions.” Latta claimed Democrats were including the spectrum auction authorization in the reconciliation package in a bid to double-dip, using the auction revenue to pay for both that measure and HR-3684.

The House Ways and Means Committee, meanwhile, hadn’t advanced language Tuesday in its reconciliation section that proposes a 30% tax credit for state, local and tribal governments “for the operations and maintenance costs of government owned broadband systems.” The credit would reduce to 26% beginning in FY 2027 and to 24% beginning in FY 2028. The credit will be “equal to the applicable percentage of the qualified broadband expenses paid or incurred by such entity during the taxable year,” the measure said. It won’t “exceed the product of $400 multiplied by the number of qualified households subscribed to the qualified broadband service.” The American Action Forum and Free State Foundation criticized the proposal.