Eshoo, Markey Aides See Good Prospects for COVID-19 Broadband Funding
Aides to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said Friday they believe additional emergency broadband funding has a good chance of making it into the next COVID-19 package, even if the Senate doesn’t take up the House-passed Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act. HR-6800 includes an $8.8 billion Emergency Broadband Connectivity Fund and $5 billion for E-rate (see 2005130059). They spoke during a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition webinar.
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The “real conversations” on what Senate Republicans will agree to include in the next COVID-19 bill “are now starting to happen,” following House passage of HR-6800, said Markey Senior Policy Adviser Joseph Wender. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republicans view the measure as House Democrats’ “opening offer.” The House passed the measure on a largely party-line vote (see 2005180056).
Republicans and Democrats “agree on a lot” about the sorts of emergency broadband funding that HR-6800 addresses, and negotiations on what makes it into a final bill are going to involve what leaders want to prioritize, Wender said. There’s going to be a “consistent effort to leverage existing programs” as recipients for emergency funding “to get money out the door to get people connected.” Senate Democrats know there are GOP colleagues “who would be supportive” particularly of putting additional E-rate money into the next pandemic bill, but “they’re proceeding politically a little more cautiously right now” so as not to get ahead of McConnell and President Donald Trump, Wender said.
House Democrats see HR-6800 as a “serious piece of legislation,” not a “rough draft,” said Eshoo Legislative Director Asad Ramzanali. The bill includes text of the Don’t Break Up the T-Band Act (HR-451) and Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act (HR-6389). HR-6800 also includes the text of the Healthcare Broadband Expansion During COVID-19 Act (HR-6474).
Much of HR-6800’s telecom language directly addresses epidemic-related issues, but even language from existing bills like HR-6389 is “pretty salient” to the crisis, Ramzanali said. HR-6389 would cap inmate calling service rates at 4 cents per minute for prepaid calls, 5 cents for collect calls. House Democrats “did not include a lot of the broader broadband infrastructure pieces that we have been talking about for years,” he said. “There could have been more” attached to the measure that wasn’t at the request of House Democratic leaders.
SHLB Executive Director John Windhausen touted the group’s proposal for $5.25 billion in emergency E-rate funding, which would be aimed partly at covering broadband costs for one year for 7 million households that currently don’t have internet access (see 2004280068). SHLB hasn’t found a lawmaker willing to file a bill based on the proposal, but “had some good conversations," Windhausen said.
There’s “a low chance” of a major infrastructure package passing Congress this year, “but it’s not a zero chance,” Wender said. Lawmakers have been talking through proposals for such a bill in fits and starts since Trump took office in 2017 but have “been unable for over three years to come to an agreement.” Trump signaled in March he’s interested in pursuing $2 trillion in infrastructure spending as part of COVID-19 legislation (see 2003310070). There will more likely be a conversation “about having a massive” infrastructure bill in 2021, after the November presidential election, Wender said. Ideas like those proposed by the all-Democratic House Rural Broadband Task Force (see 2004300058) “should be front and center," he said.