Republicans Are Trying To Make Government Efforts To Help Poor People Afford Broadband Illegal

from the everything-corporations-don’t-like-is-now-illegal dept

“Right wing activism organizations posing as consumer rights groups are trying to make it illegal for the federal government to try and help poor, rural Americans afford broadband,” is a sentence I just had to write.

Quick background: the $8 billion FCC Universal Service Fund (USF) applies a small surcharge on traditional phone lines to fund broadband expansion to unserved rural homes, schools, and libraries (of which the U.S. has a lot thanks to rampant telecom monopolization).

While it hasn’t been without its flaws and sporadic examples of waste, the program has seen broad, bipartisan support and wasn’t deemed all that controversial. It really does fund a lot of useful broadband expansion to poor and rural schools, libraries, and communities.

Enter Trumpism.

Back in June, the Supreme Court shot down a lawsuit by a right wing activism org named “Consumers Research” (which pretends to be a serious consumer rights organization), trying to kill the USF, claiming it was illegal and unconstitutional.

Consumers Research isn’t really a consumers’ group. It’s a right wing political project designed to put a veneer of pleb-friendly populism on efforts to destroy corporate oversight. The organization (which maintains a part of their website tasked with tut-scolding “woke” companies) sued the FCC a few years ago, claiming that the Universal Service Fund (USF) was unconstitutional.

Consumers’ Research claimed the FCC (and the non-profit the FCC uses to administer the program) was illegally overstepping its authority by levying the fee. The Trump-stocked Fifth Circuit, pretty radically, agreed with them last summer, putting the entire program at risk. (The 5th and 6th circuits both pretty consistently now declare any regulatory actions corporations don’t like illegal with support from the Supreme Court).

But last June the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 (with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissenting) in favor of the FCC. Not because the majority loves governance, but because big telecoms like AT&T and Comcast really enjoy the massive subsidies they receive from the program, and want this program expended dramatically to include a new tax on streaming consumers they will get to pocket.

Undaunted, Consumers Research is back again, and has filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit again, basically retrying the lawsuit focused on very narrow specifics the Supremes didn’t reject:

“The majority opinion did not address two provisions that allow for “additional” and “advanced” services for schools, libraries, and healthcare centers to be funded by the program.”

This is creating some interesting tension within the Republican party; a big chunk of which wants to dismantle the entire regulatory state, making any regulatory action corporations don’t like illegal (see recent efforts to kill a program that provided free Wi-Fi to school kids). And another chunk which wants to expand the USF to throw billions in additional dollars at entrenched telecom monopolies.

It’s unfortunate because the USF really does need good faith reform. Its contribution base of traditional phone lines is steadily shrinking, making it harder to fund these rural broadband expansion efforts.

But instead of good faith reform, you have one sect of right wing extremists trying to destroy federal governance entirely, and another (with some support from Democrats) trying to turn the USF into a slush fund propped up by a tax on streaming video (except with no serious accountability over telecoms as to whether they actually use the money to build out these networks effectively).

Ideally you’d want a program like this to both be effective, legal, and feature oversight that the subsidies are being spent correctly. Instead you’ve got two wings battling for either its complete destruction of federal governance, or a conversion of the USF into a massive, unaccountable slushfund for AT&T and Comcast. It’s extremely demonstrative of how shitty and captured U.S. telecom policy is.

It is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things.

Filed Under: broadband, deregulation, fcc, fiber, low income, telecom, universal service fund, usf