GOP Leaders Want $65B for Broadband, Countering Biden Plan

It's “the largest infrastructure investment that Republicans have come forward with,” said Senate Public Works Committee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia during a news conference. “This is a robust package” but lower than the $600 billion-$800 billion figure she floated last week (see 2104150068). “We see this as an offer that's on the table and deserves a response” from the Biden administration, she said. GOP leaders sent the plan to the White House before releasing it. The GOP's plan would divide the broadband money between the FCC and NTIA.

The $568 billion proposal “is a lot of money” and a “serious effort to get negotiations started" with Biden and congressional Democrats, Wicker told reporters. It focuses on priorities that fit the definition of “what most Americans think of as infrastructure,” and “certainly we’re all agreed that broadband is part of that.” Congress “is accustomed to working on infrastructure in a bipartisan way,” he said. “I’m disappointed” but “not surprised that “some of my colleagues,” including Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., rejected the GOP proposal, “before even seeing it.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told reporters Thursday the GOP proposal is “far too small to fund the investments the American people need and strongly support." Casey called it a “scheme” in disguise as a response “to the moment that we’re in.”

Wicker said the Republicans set the figure at $65 billion because it's the amount of proceeds from the FCC spectrum auction of the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band that he proposed in his Broadband Reserve Fund Act (S-592) to reallocate for telecom priorities, as expected (see 2104010062). The Republicans also proposed reallocating some of the unused money from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act COVID-19 aid package, enacted last month.

“If you take that $65 billion and add it to” the approximately $40 billion in broadband money “that’s already in the pipeline,” it “gets us very close to” what the administration proposed, Wicker said. “I think that is a most generous figure that we’ll have a hard time spending.” If “we get” pending broadband coverage maps “right” and “we get the data correct, we can do that within the next five years,” he said.

The Biden administration sees the GOP framework as “the beginning of a discussion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “There are a lot of details to be discussed.” Next steps will include “conversations at the staff level, conversations between senior members of our administration, members of Congress [and] appropriate committee staff through the course of next week," then additional meetings between Biden and lawmakers, Psaki said. Biden met last week with Wicker and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., on infrastructure (see 2104120060).

“We have a little bit more time” to address infrastructure than was available during work on COVID-19 aid legislation, Psaki said. “We are very open to hearing a range of mechanisms, a range of options for moving this package forward.” There “could be smaller packages that pass, there could be different mechanisms for moving things forward, and we think it could be done on a bipartisan basis,” she said. Democrats have floated the possibility of using the budget reconciliation process to enact infrastructure legislation if Republicans don’t agree on a deal (see 2103160001).

NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield and WISPA President Claude Aiken urged the Biden administration to “ensure all community-based providers have a seat at the table” in broadband infrastructure talks. Biden’s proposal “would prioritize funding to municipally operated, cooperatively organized or nonprofit providers, and we share a number of members who are organized this way,” Aiken and Bloomfield said in a Morning Consult opinion piece.