{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://matsui.house.gov/media/in-the-news/communications-daily-new-gop-criticisms-acp-signal-trouble-2024-stopgap-funding", "COMMUNICATIONS DAILY: NEW GOP CRITICISMS OF ACP SIGNAL TROUBLE FOR 2024 STOPGAP FUNDING", "2023-12-22", "2023", "2023-12", "Democrat", "House", "CA", "Doris O. Matsui", "M001163", "matsui.house.gov", "matsui", "https://matsui.house.gov/media", "scraper", "Lead Republican lawmakers\u2019 recent charge that the FCC was \u201cdeeply misleading\u201d about the affordable connectivity program\u2019s efficacy (see 2312150068) has solidified perceptions on and off Capitol Hill that it will be extremely difficult to reach a deal allocating additional money before the initiative's funding runs out next year, lobbyists and observers told us. Estimates peg ACP as likely to exhaust its initial $14.2 billion tranche from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act during the first half of 2024 (see 2309210060). The White House is pushing for Congress to appropriate an additional $6 billion to fully fund the program through the end of 2024 (see 2310250075).\n\nThere\u2019s a \u201cdirect correlation\u201d between Republicans\u2019 concerns about the accuracy of FCC-provided ACP data and their skepticism about giving the program more money, Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., told us Monday. He was one of four GOP leaders who raised the ACP accuracy issue last week in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The others were Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz (Texas), House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta (Ohio). If the FCC \u201ccan\u2019t prove to us that all these things that are being claimed in terms of how the money is being spent, then I don\u2019t know how you can make a case for why we ought to give them more funding,\u201d Thune said.\n\nLatta voiced continued misgivings about promising more ACP money before there is a clear sense of the Commerce committees' direction on the program\u2019s place within a potentially restructured USF apparatus. \u201cI haven\u2019t had an opportunity yet to sit down with\u201d lawmakers in the USF working group, Latta told us last week. Thune and Senate Communications Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., formed the group in May to evaluate moving forward on a comprehensive USF revamp (see 2305110066), Latta told us last week. He and House Communications ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., joined the working group in September (see 2309210060).\n\nRepublicans believe \u201cwe\u2019ve got to look at what\u2019s necessary, how much is necessary, what\u2019s been the past experience\u201d with the existing IIJA broadband money \u201cand whether it\u2019s been spent wisely,\u201d Latta said. \u201cFor me, if dollars are already out there, you don\u2019t want to be putting more\u201d money into broadband without clear proof that it\u2019s needed and that the federal government won\u2019t mismanage it. Some lobbyists anticipate congressional Democrats will call on participating ISPs to continue the same discount for qualifying subscribers that they offered via ACP if Congress doesn\u2019t allocate additional money before existing funding runs out.\n\nCrisis 'Momentum'\n\n\u201cI have only heard support for ACP from the colleagues I\u2019ve spoken to\u201d on both sides of the aisle, reflecting the \u201cstrong bipartisan vote\u201d in the Senate to pass IIJA in 2021, Lujan told us. He believes that his staff and aides to Thune, Latta and other USF working group participants \u201cwill be able to find some solutions\u201d on USF \u201cin one form or another.\u201d Lujan is \u201coptimistic\" that before ACP funding runs out both the House and the Senate will act in a way that President Joe Biden can support. \u201cI don\u2019t want to get out in front of the work product\u201d that the working group is putting together, he said: \u201cThe group has been at it, working in good faith,\u201d on something \u201cthat will yield results.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs we get closer to\u201d ACP\u2019s anticipated funding exhaustion date in April, \u201cpeople will begin losing access to affordable internet and that will focus everyone\u2019s minds,\u201d said Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. \u201cMomentum will build as crisis nears, but we\u2019d like to avoid that point. We\u2019d like to get started on that now, but it may only get real\u201d for Republicans closer to the deadline.\n\nMatsui and other Democrats pointed to strong ACP subscriber figures in rural Republican areas as reason for that party\u2019s lawmakers to support stopgap funding. \u201cPeople who represent rural areas need to understand how critical this program is\u201d for their constituents, Matsui told us. \u201cThey\u2019re really going to disappoint their constituents unless they can help them out here,\u201d which could be a motivator in the runup to the 2024 election. \u201cThat\u2019s something I\u2019m going to be talking about a lot\u201d in the months ahead, she added.\n\nACP \u201cimpacts so many different types\u201d of House districts, \u201cbut especially ... rural\u201d seats, said Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., who intends to file legislation that would allocate stopgap ACP funding (see 2311300069). \u201cIt\u2019s more expensive to build out the infrastructure\u201d in rural areas, which in combination with lower population tends to increase subscription costs. Many rural lawmakers\u2019 constituents \u201ccan\u2019t afford\u201d broadband service without ACP subsidies, she said.\n\n'Budget Politics'\n\nACP\u2019s future will be \u201csignificantly more important\u201d as a policy matter in 2024 than the push to renew the FCC\u2019s spectrum auction authority, which has become entangled in stalled talks on a broader legislative package (see 2312040001), said New Street\u2019s Blair Levin. \u201cI wish the FCC were to devote as much time talking about ACP as they appear to be talking about auction authority, but more importantly I wish they had a strategy\u201d to convince a bipartisan majority of lawmakers to give the program more money.\n\n\u201cCongress needs to provide a couple more years of funding\u201d for ACP \u201cwith the idea that there\u2019s going to be this general rethink\u201d of USF, added Levin, who\u2019s also a Brookings Institution senior fellow. \u201cI think there\u2019s a strong political consensus that this should happen, but during a presidential election year it\u2019s difficult to do rational things even when there\u2019s a broad consensus that it should happen.\u201d The Biden administration is already finding it difficult to reach a deal with Congress on aid to Israel and Ukraine \u201cwith all the attention being paid\u201d to it, so \u201cthat suggests a certain kind of game theory about budget politics that makes getting ACP funding through more difficult,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cIt will be difficult for Congress to get something done on ACP,\u201d said Jeffrey Westling, American Action Forum director-technology and innovation policy. \u201cThere doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be a deal tying it in with USF reform, but there does need to be one on ACP itself.\u201d If \u201cit has to be tied to USF reform,\u201d as some seek, there's unlikely to be much movement in the short term \u201cbecause that\u2019s such a big lift,\u201d he said.\n\nAn ACP-specific legislative package would likely center on \u201chow it\u2019s structured and who it\u2019s targeting,\u201d Westling added. \u201cRight now, I can\u2019t see Republicans blanket reauthorizing\u201d the program as is. A lot of people are participating in ACP, and \"it\u2019s going through a lot of money because it\u2019s a large benefit and there\u2019s a lot of fraud and abuse of the program that can be tamped down,\u201d he said: A deal would likely involve a \u201cmuch more targeted low income\u201d participant base, though \u201cthis is one of the more fiscally conservative benefit programs.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:14:16Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://matsui.house.gov/media/in-the-news/communications-daily-new-gop-criticisms-acp-signal-trouble-2024-stopgap-funding"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.68991694226861, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}