Vice President Kamala Harris, who was tapped to lead the administration’s rural broadband expansion, failed to connect one person with high-speed internet despite having $42.5 billion from the so-called infrastructure bill.
During his 2021 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden tapped Vice President Harris to lead the effort “because I know it will get done.”
Now, in 2024, it appears that the Biden-Harris admin has made little progress getting Americans connected to high-speed internet.
File/U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, on Monday, Feb. 27, 2023. Harris spoke about the White House’s efforts to expand affordable high-speed internet nationwide. (Sean Rayford/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty)
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commission Brendan Carr noted in June that Biden and Harris did not connect one American despite having access to $42.5 billion in funding from the so-called infrastructure bill, or 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.”
NEW: Hundreds of broadband infrastructure builders are now sounding the alarm, writing that the $42 billion plan to expand Internet has been wired to fail.
President Biden put VP Harris in charge of this effort back in 2021 and 9️⃣8️⃣2️⃣ days later not 1 person has been connected. https://t.co/LFmYg12ZmX pic.twitter.com/BNjLaNG8mr
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) July 24, 2024
He added, “Hundreds of broadband infrastructure builders are now sounding the alarm, writing that the $42 billion plan to expand Internet has been wired to fail.”
Breitbart News reported:
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.
Carr in June contended that much of the Biden administration’s failure to expand broadband is to its 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.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
