Gerard Scimeca – Chairman, CASE
June 24, 2021
Reasonable Americans agree that when people can’t afford the basic necessities of life, our government has a responsibility to step in and offer a helping hand. When families can’t afford food, for instance, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) gives them vouchers to redeem at supermarkets, convenience stores and so on.
These programs — whatever their deficits — reflect a basic American decency, a fundamental belief that a great nation must also be a good nation. But the way these programs are constructed is also quintessentially American: families who benefit from SNAP do not go to a government-run grocery store. They go to private sector operations and spend public funds.
The idea of the government constructing grocery stores to address food insecurity sounds faintly ridiculous — but it is the exact approach that the Biden administration has proposed to expand Internet access. This plan, which intends to force the government into the Internet business, takes the generous instincts and impulses of the American people and betrays them.
President Joe Biden’s proposed American Jobs Act and recently-passed American Rescue Plan (aka “the stimulus”) both seek to close the digital divide in America — connecting those Americans who do not have internet access. The goal is noble, and it is that rare area of bipartisan agreement in today’s fractured times. Both Democrats and Republicans believe all Americans should be able to get online.
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