No Connection

Brendan Carr: Biden Has Not Connected One Person with High-Speed Internet with $42.5 Billion from Infrastructure Bill

Sean Moran - June 15, 2024
Breitbart News

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on Friday wrote that President Joe Biden has not connected one American with high-speed internet with $42.5 billion in funding from the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill.

“In 2021, the Biden Administration got $42.45 billion from Congress to deploy high-speed Internet to millions of Americans. Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at earliest,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner wrote.

“Meanwhile, the Biden Admin has been layering a partisan political agenda on top of this $42.45B program – a liberal wish list that has nothing to do with connecting Americans. Climate change mandates, tech biases, DEI requirements, favoring government-run networks + more,” he continued.

Carr is specifically slamming the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which allocated $42.45 billion to support broadband infrastructure and adoption.

The program was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), otherwise known as the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill. The bill had no conservative victories and had many leftist carveouts, as Breitbart News detailed.

Congress passed the infrastructure bill in 2021, which would mean that the BEAD program has had little success in its two years since Biden passed the bill.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also struggled to explain why Biden has only built “seven or eight” electric vehicle charging stations, which the funding also came from the IIJA.

“The timeline is bad. The policy cuts that the Biden Administration have made are even worse. The Biden Administration has set up a $42.45 billion program that is poised to miss the mark and leave rural communities behind,” Carr said in a statement to Breitbart News.

Carr continued, saying that the BEAD program fails to close the “digital divide,” or the gap between with those with high-speed internet and those without.

“The Biden Administration is barreling towards a broadband blunder. Congress has appropriated enough money to end the digital divide, but the Biden Administration is squandering the moment by putting partisan political goals above smart policy,” the FCC commissioner explained. “It is doing so through rate regulation, through union, technology, and DEI preferences, and through a thumb on the scale for government run networks. All of this threatens to leave rural communities behind.”

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.