Sen. Roger Wicker, (R-MS), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, urged Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen to coordinate her department’s new broadband programs with other federal agencies supporting broadband deployment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of connectivity, according to Wicker. “For the past year, millions of Americans have depended on broadband for work, education, and health care,” he wrote in a letter. Yet Wicker noted that 14.5 million Americans still lack access to a broadband connection.
To address this disparity, the federal government has myriad programs spread across multiple agencies—most notably the FCC, the Department of Agriculture, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration—to support the expansion of broadband, according to the lawmaker. “The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 added the Department of the Treasury to the list of agencies tackling the digital divide.”
“That law tasked Treasury with distributing $350 billion to state and local governments to ‘make necessary investments in…broadband infrastructure,’” wrote Wicker. “It also established a $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund that will allow states, territories, and tribal governments to ‘carry out critical capital projects directly enabling work, education, and health monitoring, including remote options,’” he added.
Wicker called interagency coordination “critical” to bridging the digital divide. “Without coordination of these efforts, agencies risk wasting scarce federal resources, duplicating support provided by another agency, or overbuilding a project already subsidized by federal dollars or private investment. Such waste leaves millions of Americans unserved, undermining the very purpose of these programs,” wrote Wicker.
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