Republicans: Helping Poor People And Minorities Afford Broadband Is Illegal Now, Sorry
We’ve noted more than once that the 2021 infrastructure bill is poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies to the states. A lot of that money will be thrown in the lap of incumbents with long histories of empty promises, but a lot of it will be leveraged for genuine, major improvements in broadband options by ISPs, municipalities, cooperatives, and utilities.
Republicans, of course, voted against these improvements. At the same time, Republicans have lied repeatedly to their constituents and tried to take credit for them. They’ve also been whining for much of the last year about some pretty flimsy requirements requiring that ISPs have to try to make sure there’s a slower, more affordable option for poor people (the gall!).
They’ve had several show hearings about this massive indignity. Republicans are also simultaneously mad that nonprofits are poised to receive $1.25 billion in “Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program” grants to “support efforts to achieve digital equity, promote digital inclusion activities, and spur greater adoption of broadband among Covered Populations.” The horror.
There’s always been racial discrimination involved in determining both where fiber broadband gets deployed (“redlining”), and how much broadband costs. Data indicates big ISPs routinely skip over minority and low-income populations for upgrades (even when taking billions in taxpayer subsidies). Data also has shown Big ISPs charge minorities more money for slower service in many areas.
U.S. broadband generally sucks, and is patchier, slower, and more expensive than in most developed nations. And however bad it is, it’s routinely worse for low income and minority communities. That’s documentable and not, as Republicans like to insist, up for debate.
The government only just last year even acknowledged this was happening. Note they didn’t really do a whole lot about it beyond that; but even the action of acknowledging racism was involved in fiber upgrades was enough to send Republicans into a hissy fit.
The Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program’s NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity) states that grant winners must use the funding to serve members of “covered populations,” defined to include “individuals who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group.” Basically, it’s a bare bones effort to ensure that some money is spent shoring up the decades of discrimination in broadband deployment.
Republicans and Ted Cruz don’t like that (for what should be obvious reasons), so Cruz last week fired off a letter to the NTIA (which manages the program in conjunction with the states) insisting that trying to help poor minority communities afford broadband is “unconstitutional.” In large part because the corrupt, Trumplican-stocked Supreme Court has looked poorly on similar programs:
“NTIA has not yet finalized a grant for any Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program funding to any applicants. Therefore, NTIA still has time to reverse course before it breaks the law. As the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, we urge you to strike this unlawful Guidance now.”
Cruz, likely the incoming chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, is also calling for a pause of the Broadband Equity Access And Deployment (BEAD) infrastructure program more generally. In part because Republicans want to redirect subsidies away from community owned broadband initiatives (that focus on affordable fiber), and toward AT&T, Comcast, and Elon Musk’s expensive satellite services.
Of course guys like Cruz, who happily rubber stamp every unconstitutional whim King Donald has, couldn’t actually care any less about what is or isn’t constitutional. They’re simply upset that the federal government identified systemic racism and made the slightest effort to do something about it. All the legal arguments are just decorative, and routinely aren’t based in reason or precedent.
Republicans just genuinely despise helping the plebs. You might recall House Republicans tried to ban towns and cities from offering their residents affordable community broadband during peak COVID. They killed a COVID-era program that provided a $30 broadband discount for poor people. And they broadly support telecom monopolies’ quest to rip off captive customers in uncompetitive markets.
This is usually framed as a concern about taxpayer costs or “government overreach”; a concern that’s absent when it comes time to hand out fat subsidies to their cronies like AT&T, Comcast, or Elon Musk, or threaten journalists’ broadcast licenses for protected speech. The pseudo-legalese to justify the corruption and racism is the flimsiest, laziest scaffolding imaginable to disguise the active disdain the party has for poor minority communities. And given the corrupt nature of the courts, it often succeeds.
Keep in mind: it’s not like these Democratic equity programs are hugely transformative. They’re often the flimsiest effort imaginable to address longstanding systemic inequity. The FCC’s belated acknowledgement of racial discrimination in broadband earlier this year, for example, couldn’t even state offending ISPs by name or provide any real solutions for past inequities.
But even these day-late-dollar-short efforts are deemed radical and illegal by corrupt Republicans like Cruz. And when our broken press can be bothered to cover these efforts (see: Fox News), they take Republican opposition in exclusively good faith, utterly refusing to illustrate the inconsistent reasoning or underlying discrimination. It is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things.