“I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” goes the adage known to send a chill down the spine of many within earshot. This is due to the historical fact that most federal bureaucratic “help” is dispensed with the delicacy of Godzilla walking through downtown Tokyo.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), with apparently nothing to keep themselves occupied, have decided to ladle out some help to the E-Rate program, a government funded project that helps schools and libraries connect to high-speed broadband to assist certain areas of our nation close the digital divide.
As with any government program, E-Rate has issues, including its fair share of wasteful spending. But overall the program is largely a success in helping students connect to all of the educational opportunities afforded to others where high-speed broadband is more widely available. But now the FCC has issued a Report and Order that will vastly expand the program in ways the law does not allow, with an inflated budget and a vastly expanded menu of services, the cost of which will only serve to undermine funding for the program’s core purpose.
Despite having absolutely no authority to do so, the FCC plans to make E-Rate a veritable mini-mart for broadband services and equipment. Participating schools and libraries will be able to purchase Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless internet and loan them out to just about anyone with a library card, to be used wherever one is able to take a library book, which is to say anywhere.
Not only is this proposal far beyond the scope of the E-Rate program, it is extremely costly, wasteful, and redundant. E-Rate is funded by a tax on landline and mobile phone services, a tax that has ballooned to over 34% today under Biden’s FCC. An E-Rate program that does all of the things on the FCC’s wish list is going to cost a lot more, putting pressure to raise taxes on consumers even higher.
And none of this is even necessary. Over the past seven years governments across the state, local, and federal level have committed tens of billions of dollars to expand and upgrade high-speed internet services across the country, rendering this order entirely redundant and wasteful. The FCC’s plan to turn the E-Rate program into the equivalent of a government-run Apple Store is a complete corruption of the program’s stated goal and statutory authority.
Thankfully there are leaders in Washington working to shut this illegal FCC order down, including Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and dissenting FCC commissioner Brendan Carr. With the FCC poised to issue this order July 18, these leaders are issuing statements and challenges to this proposal while building a strong coalition to lead in opposition.
CASE is extremely pleased to join this coalition opposing yet another Biden White House bureaucratic overreach where a federal agency corrupts the clear text of its statutory authority to push an illegal proposal purely for political advantage. The issue is entirely clear: the FCC should abandon this cynical, wasteful, and nonsensical expansion of the E-Rate program. And if FCC commissioners tap dance around common sense and legal realities to approve the E-Rate expansion, the courts should be prepared to strike it down.
