Vice President Kamala Harris, appointed to lead the administration’s rural broadband expansion initiative, has not connected a single person to high-speed internet despite having access to $42.5 billion from the infrastructure bill.
In his 2021 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the initiative, stating, “because I know it will get done.”
Now, in 2024, it seems that the Biden-Harris administration has made minimal progress in connecting Americans to high-speed internet.
In June, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr criticized President Biden and Vice President Harris for failing to connect any Americans to high-speed internet, despite having $42.5 billion allocated for this purpose from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Carr noted on Wednesday, “President Biden put VP Harris in charge of this effort back in 2021 and days later not 1 person has been connected.”
“Hundreds of broadband infrastructure builders are now sounding the alarm, writing that the $42 billion plan to expand Internet has been wired to fail,” he added.
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.
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.
In June, Commissioner Brendan Carr argued that the Biden administration’s lack of progress in expanding broadband is largely due to its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals.
“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.”
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