Cruz Hits NTIA's $849 Million 'Slush Fund' for BEAD
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wants a “detailed update” from NTIA on “major administrative delays in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that have resulted from unlawful red tape [the agency] imposed.” Cruz in September…
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urged states to return unused BEAD money if they have adequate funding from other federal broadband programs to deploy connectivity in unserved areas (see 2309150069). Cruz is now focusing his ire on NTIA allocating $849 million of the $42.5 billion Congress awarded BEAD in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to administer the program. That “nearly billion-dollar slush fund ... appears to have enabled NTIA to impose excessive administrative burdens and pursue the Biden-Harris administration’s extreme left-wing social policies, without legal authority,” Cruz said Tuesday in a letter to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson. “NTIA has sought to misuse its BEAD authorities to impose rate regulation, unionized labor requirements, climate change regulations, technology mandates, and other extralegal policies on the States. This has continued despite Congress repeatedly reminding NTIA that Congress gave it no statutory authority to use BEAD for any of these social goals” (see 2304200064). “The hard-earned taxpayer dollars appropriated to BEAD should be spent as Congress authorized -- to bring internet access to all Americans -- not held hostage to central planning edicts or left-wing priorities,” Cruz said. He wants NTIA to give him information by Aug. 27 on how it's spent BEAD administrative funding and its evaluation process for states' BEAD plans. NTIA is “in receipt of the letter and will respond,” a spokesperson emailed. A Cruz news release announcing the letter targeted Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, because President Joe Biden put her in charge of shepherding the broadband portion of his infrastructure spending proposal through Congress in 2021 (see 2104290076).