Trump Admin Hijacked $21 Billion In Taxpayer Money Earmarked For Internet Access And Then Went Mute

from the this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things dept

I’ve written a few times now about how the Trump administration hijacked a $42.5 billion broadband investment fund included in the 2021 infrastructure bill, stripped away requirements that the resulting broadband be fairly deployed and affordable, and instead redirected billions of dollars to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in exchange for slower, more expensive satellite connectivity they’d already planned to deploy without subsidies.

Basically, this redirected tens of billions of dollars away from higher-capacity, faster, more reliable fiber access, and toward Low-Earth Orbit satellite services, which have a long list of problems I’ve explored in detail. The Trump administration then falsely claimed that they’d “saved” taxpayers roughly $21 billion (you can read my recent piece at The Verge for more detail on what that means for real people).

Here’s the thing. This $21 billion in “non-deployment funds” the Trump administration claims it “saved” is technically supposed to go to the states. Congress (aka, the law) specifically stated that the full $42.5 billion included in this Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) was supposed to be spent on internet access or something very closely adjacent (digital skills training, telehealth tools).

But after the Trump NTIA retooled the program last year (causing all sorts of new delays and problems) they basically just went mute on what happens next. They refuse to meaningfully answer questions on where that money is going to go:

“It’s anybody’s guess if nondeployment funds will ever be released. It’s now been 13 months since the NTIA changed the rules for nondeployment funds, and they are obviously in no hurry to see these funds ever get spent.”

This hasn’t gotten a ton of attention in a U.S. press that finds infrastructure too boring to cover, but it still obviously matters. There were various clumsy attempts to hijack these “non-deployment funds” for other purposes (Sen. Joni Ernst proposed using it reduce the federal deficit, others have wanted to throw it at AI data centers), but that would be technically illegal (for whatever that means anymore).

It seems likely that the Trump administration just hopes that people forget about the funding so it can be pocketed by crony capitalism and associates, but that hasn’t been easy. State leaders and even many Republicans have consistently peppered the NTIA with letters asking them what happens next to these funds, only to be met with more delays or silence.

It’s worth remembering that last election season, Republicans (with Ezra Klein and the “abundance” crew’s help) made a giant stink about how this program was taking way too long to connect anybody. For the whole 2024 election season, Republicans blasted the BEAD program’s bureaucracy and promised how once they were in power, they’d completely revamp it, speed everything up, and save taxpayer billions.

When that “revamp” arrived it involved creating all manner of costly new delays, stripping all the language out of the program ensuring funds were spent fairly and wisely, dumping a whole bunch of money into the laps of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and then running off with half of the program’s funds and refusing to tell anybody what happens next.

In the interim, delays, high costs (from pointless tariffs and wars), and bureaucracy have resulted in even more original BEAD subsidy bidders backing off of their plans for widespread fiber, resulting in bid defaults, even more delays, and even more taxpayer money being thrown at Bezos and Musk for satellite broadband that’s too congested to handle the full load.

Great stuff. Very populist. Incredibly well thought out government efficiencies.

Filed Under: bead, broadband, elon musk, fiber, howard lutnick, infrastructure bill, internet access, jeff bezos, ntia, satellite, subsidies