Biden-Era Official Blasts 'Misleading' Video Blaming Democrats for Lengthy BEAD Process
Bharat Ramamurti, National Economic Council deputy director during part of the Biden administration, criticized X owner Elon Musk on Friday for “amplifying” a “deeply misleading clip” of New York Times' Ezra Klein blaming Democrats for NTIA’s evaluation process for state-level applicants to the $42.5 billion BEAD program. Congress mandated the BEAD process in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration are determining how to revamp BEAD after consistently criticizing how the Biden-era NTIA administered the program. Senate Commerce Committee Democrats raised concerns about GOP BEAD plans during a Thursday confirmation hearing for NTIA nominee Arielle Roth (see 2503270065).
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During an appearance last week on The Daily Show host John Stewart’s podcast, Klein detailed his view of the 14-step evaluation process. He noted that it took applicant jurisdictions three years to complete the first five steps, including establishing five-year action plans. “It’s hard even to talk about this, man,” Klein said as he rattled off more steps. “This is the Biden administration’s process for its own bill,” he said: “They wanted this to happen. This is how liberal government works now.” Stewart repeatedly expressed shock and bewilderment at Klein's description of the BEAD process, at one point exclaiming, “Oh my fucking God.” Stewart later said he was “speechless,” and the process was “far worse than I could’ve imagined. But the fact that they amputated their own legs over this is what’s so stunning.”
Musk, who is CEO of Starlink parent SpaceX and leads President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory group, repeatedly reshared video of the Stewart-Klein discussion on X, posting Friday that it “shows why a regulatory overhaul is necessary. The burden of mountains of regulations is why the high speed rail can’t get down in California and the bridge that the ship hit still hasn’t been fixed.”
Ramamurti pushed back Friday against Musk and Klein's characterization of the BEAD process. “Klein implies that Dems got in a room and unilaterally decided on this lengthy process” for BEAD, which “is false,” he said. “This process came out of” Congress’ 2021 IIJA talks “and was largely at the insistence of *GOP Senators* as a condition for their votes. These GOP members wanted this process” in part to “ensure that the money didn’t fund projects that went nowhere, which had been a problem with previous state broadband funding programs.” Republicans also acted at the “behest of large incumbent internet providers, who did not want a dollar spent to build new infrastructure where they were already providing service,” Ramamurti said. He admitted it’s possible to argue “that the Biden Admin should have rejected these GOP requests and not gotten any broadband funding instead, but to claim that this was solely our design is not true.”