Harris Touts Biden Broadband Plan Amid GOP Impasse

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that “when people are cut off from high-speed internet, they are also cut off from opportunity,” Harris said. “We’re talking about racial disparities. We are talking about income disparities. And why does that matter? Because it leads to other disparities.” The federal government must “remove the barriers” to broadband access and affordability via the Biden plan, just as the U.S. did via the 1936 Rural Electrification Act to deliver wider access to electricity, Harris said.

The event included six participants whose experiences aligned with how the Biden administration believes its broadband plan can improve connectivity access. They included North End Woodward Community Coalition Operating Director Joan Ross, who talked about the organization’s role as an anchor participant in the Detroit-based Equitable Internet Initiative, which operates a community-level broadband program. Harris said that program appeared to be a strong example of the “community internet model,” which could improve competition against commercial ISPs.

Biden remains “eager to engage” further with Senate Republicans on infrastructure talks, but the GOP has “a ways more to go” in reaching a deal, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a news conference. "The ball is in the Republicans’ court,” Psaki said. “We’re not quite” ready to pivot to instead seek passage of Democrats’ preferred infrastructure package via budget reconciliation (see 2103160001).

The Biden administration “is prepared to accept your proposed funding of $65 billion in broadband investments,” the White House said in a memo to Senate Public Works Committee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., that circulated Friday. “We believe we can still achieve universal access to affordable high-speed internet at your lower funding level, though it will take longer.”

The counteroffer “is well above the range of what can pass Congress with bipartisan support,” Capito said in a statement. “There continue to be vast differences between the White House and Senate Republicans when it comes to the definition of infrastructure, the magnitude of proposed spending, and how to pay for it. Based on today’s meeting, the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with” Biden. Senate Republicans will “continue to engage in conversations with the administration,” Capito said. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., later urged Biden to "not waste time trading the necessary scope and scale of this critical infrastructure package for Congressional Republican votes that have yet to and will never materialize."

House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Bob Latta of Ohio touted Commerce Committee Republicans’ American Broadband Act (HR-3435) as an alternative to the Biden proposal and Democratic bills. The measure, filed last week, would allocate $20 billion over five years for an NTIA-administered broadband grant program aimed at funding public-private partnerships and $3 billion for an NTIA-administered rural wireless grant program (see 2105200083). “We want to make sure that we get the coverage out there, we want to help the unserved areas” and ensure federal broadband coverage maps continue to improve, Latta said during a Free State Foundation virtual event.

Latta criticized the Biden plan’s call for lifting barriers to municipal broadband and its focus on addressing affordability in a way that would appear to seek rate regulation. “We don't want to see a situation where you're giving money to the benefit of” municipal networks at the expense of commercial ISPs because “you want to have fair competition,” he said: Rate regulation would inhibit ISPs’ ability to continue to innovate and deploy in ways that prevented the U.S. from having capacity problems during the pandemic that other nations experienced.