U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was among nine Republican senators who sent a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris pressing her on the administration’s “failed” initiative to connect millions of Americans to broadband internet.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, provided the National Telecommunications and Information Administration with $42.45 billion for the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which was intended to “provide broadband access to unserved communities, particularly those in rural areas.”
During his 2021 Address to a Joint Session of Congress, the president specifically asked Harris to lead the effort to ensure the funds go towards connecting “every American with high-speed Internet, including 35 percent of rural America that still doesn’t have it.”
However, as the Republican senators pointed out in their letter to Harris, “not a single person has been connected to the internet using the $42.45 billion allocated for the BEAD program.”
“Despite your assurances over three years ago, rural and unserved communities continue to wait for the connectivity they were promised,” the senators wrote.
Instead, the Republicans said the funds allocated for the BEAD program have been used to add “partisan, extralegal requirements that were never envisioned by Congress and have obstructed broadband deployment.”
“By imposing burdensome climate change mandates on infrastructure projects, prioritizing government-owned networks over private investment, mandating the use of unionized labor in states, and seeking to regulate broadband rates, your administration has caused unnecessary delays leaving millions of Americans unconnected,” the senators wrote.
The Republicans concluded the letter by calling the mismanagement of funds a “a gross misuse of limited taxpayer dollars,” adding, “The American public deserves better.”
In addition to Blackburn, U.S. Senators John Thune (R-SD), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Todd Young (R-IN), Ted Budd (R-NC), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Eric Schmitt (R-MO).
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
