Clarke Circulates Petition to Force House Vote on Stopgap ACP Money

ACP “has been a transformative force, empowering nearly 23 million American households in rural and urban communities with reliable, high-speed, and affordable broadband access,” Clarke said Wednesday in a statement. “To continue this progress, I implore my colleagues to join me by signing the discharge petition. This will ensure [HR-6929] receives the vote it deserves” on the House floor. “We cannot turn our back on the progress made in closing the digital divide,” she said.

A Clarke aide confirmed she filed H.Res. 1119 Tuesday night and emphasized they wouldn’t be able to collect signatures on the petition until after a seven-legislative-day waiting period while it sits in the Rules Committee. Resolution backers would need to wait an additional seven legislative days once the petition gets 218 signatures before a member could call for a floor vote. HR-6929 had 223 co-sponsors besides Clarke as of Wednesday afternoon, surpassing the majority needed for the bill's House passage. A pro-ACP lobbyist told us a “sufficient number of” the 21 Republicans who are HR-6929 co-sponsors are “willing to join” the petition to give it a strong chance of reaching the 218-member threshold.

“We have to do everything we possibly can” to keep ACP funded, said House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif. “I realize there's not a whole lot of time” to push through stopgap money before the current funding runs out, but that's “no reason for us to not do something.” ACP recipients “have really experienced how important” the program is and hopefully that will convince Republicans who have thus far resisted a stopgap allocation without instituting a program revamp, she told us.

House Communications Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, emphasized the bicameral Universal Service Fund revamp working group’s effort on a related legislative package as his preferred vehicle for bolstering ACP because it would couple long-term funding with changes to the program’s rules aimed at preventing waste, fraud and abuse. “We’re looking much further down the road” than simply giving ACP stopgap money with no additional safeguards, he told us. “We want to get this done” and there are time constraints. Latta didn’t indicate the working group is nearing a legislative deal. A pro-ACP lobbyist noted the group is still “trying to put words to paper.”

'Every Possible Vehicle'

“At this moment, you look for every possible vehicle” for allocating more ACP money, said Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. “Time is running out. This money is about to expire, and we should not leave millions of Americans hanging when their access to high-speed internet is in peril.” He told us he hadn't previously heard talk that the Biden administration might push for stopgap ACP money in conjunction with a potential emergency appropriations package with federal funding to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore, but believes it would be a “good idea.” Van Hollen is “not sure there will be a supplemental package that just includes the bridge, so we should expect to see it include a number of emergency items. ACP is an emergency item.”

“Any movement on this front is great,” said Greg Guice, chief policy officer for pro-affordable connectivity consultancy Vernonburg Group. If Clarke can “get a vote” on HR-6929 via the discharge petition, that would show “really strong support for the Senate taking action.” There “are a finite number of” must-pass legislative vehicles that lawmakers could use to appropriate ACP money now that the FY24 spending bills are finished, including FAA reauthorization legislation and other domestic-focused bills, he said: “The choices are getting slimmer.” Lobbyists indicated a long-sought Ukraine-Israel foreign aid package is out as an option because fraught congressional dynamics mean only a narrowly tailored bill on those issues is likely to clear the House. The Senate-passed 2024 National Security Act foreign aid bill (HR-815) was specifically limited to aid for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine rather than including unrelated provisions (see 2402070059).

The number of Republicans who sign H.Res. 1119 will determine whether momentum coming out of potential House passage of HR-6929 will be sufficient to encourage at least nine Senate GOP conference members to back the measure and clear the upper chamber’s 60-vote threshold for invoking cloture on legislation, said Brookings Institution senior fellow Blair Levin. “There’s a lot of bipartisan agreement on various matters,” but “people tend to be really loyal leaders, and that’s what the fundamental problem is” in reaching legislative deals. “I’m totally for anything to get the job done” on ACP, but there are still major hurdles that could trip up the funding push, said Levin, who’s also a New Street analyst.

Free Press Action Internet Campaign Director Heather Franklin praised Clarke Wednesday for initiating the discharge petition. “If lawmakers are serious about closing the digital divide, they must get the cost of connectivity under control,” Franklin said. “The most immediate way to do that is by … forcing House leadership to bring [HR-6929] to the floor. There is absolutely no time to waste.”