FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr slammed the Biden administration on Friday - writing on X that President Joe Biden has yet to connect a single American with high-speed internet.
"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," Carr 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."
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.
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 14, 2024
Climate change mandates, tech biases, DEI requirements, favoring government-run networks + more.
As Breitbart notes further;
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," Carr explained further. "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."
