Deputy Commerce Secretary Nominee Grilled on BEAD; Leaders Duel on Spectrum
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington and other Democrats used a Thursday confirmation hearing for deputy commerce secretary nominee Paul Dabbar to restate their concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment to the Commerce Department doling out appropriated broadband and semiconductor funding. Cantwell and Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also emphasized their diverging views on repurposing DOD airwaves for commercial 5G use, an issue that’s been a major sticking point in negotiations to include a spectrum title in a coming GOP-sought budget reconciliation package (see 2504180027).
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., cited serious misgivings with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s moves to review and revamp NTIA’s $42.5 billion BEAD program (see 2503050067). “We allocated a lot of money that hasn't really gone out quite yet,” Klobuchar said. “We don't want to get back into that whole history, but we do have to get [that money] out.” She asked Dabbar to commit “to getting that funding out to the states and to work.” Klobuchar and 11 other Senate Commerce Democrats voted against NTIA administrator nominee Arielle Roth last month because of BEAD concerns (see 2504090037).
Rosen voiced major frustration that NTIA had frozen Nevada’s $416 million BEAD allocation and unsuccessfully tried to get Dabbar to commit to "unfreezing” it. “I will go under oath and tell you it has been fully approved,” she said. “It's tech-neutral, cost-effective [and] fulfills the mission of bringing high-speed, reliable broadband to every Nevadan.” The “money is coming, and now it's frozen,” Rosen said: “It's not that something is in process or under review or any of those things. This is a project that has been completed according to the appropriate specifications and approved.”
“I will commit to certainly look at improving what's been going on,” Dabbar said. “I feel very passionate about the BEAD program and the fact that the 14-step process has not actually gotten to deployment to Nevada and elsewhere.” That “process has not gone as well as it should have,” he said.
Chips Act, DOD Airwaves
Cantwell told Dabbar that President Donald Trump continuing to say “he’s not for” the 2022 Chips and Science Act funding, which aims to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing (see 2503050039), “and then all of us having to push back every damn day is nuts.” Senate Commerce -- with a Democratic majority during the past two Congresses -- and the Biden administration “got that done,” she said. “I need to know that you’re not going to be another one of these people [in the administration who] is going to make this harder for us.”
Dabbar said Trump and Lutnick have “been very clear about how to take the resources under the Chips and Science Act and how to get the most bang for the buck for that for the taxpayer.” He highlighted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s March announcement that it would invest $165 billion to build three chipmaking plants in the U.S. after getting $6.6 billion in Chips and Science Act funding as “a great example of taking [that money and getting] the most out of it.”
Cruz emphasized that his 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act, which he wants to form the basis of an airwaves reconciliation title (see 2502190068), “does not constrain the various parties in determining how to meet” the measure’s mandate that NTIA identify at least 2,500 MHz of midband spectrum to reallocate within the next five years. It “enhances our national security, as any agency that becomes more efficient in its use of spectrum will receive significant funding,” Cruz said. Dabbar said increasing the amount of available spectrum would benefit both “satellite 5G” and “satellite 6G, where the U.S. needs to jump forward as the next competitive battlefield with” China.
Cruz and other GOP advocates of including spectrum language in reconciliation appeared to draw renewed attention Thursday amid chatter that the Congressional Budget Office increased its 10-year score for renewing the FCC’s lapsed auction authority to $80 billion-$90 billion, up from $65 billion-$70 billion (see 2502180058). House Commerce is eyeing a Wednesday markup session on its section of a reconciliation package, which will include any spectrum proposal.
Cantwell later pressed Dabbar on whether the federal government should “give away DOD assets [like spectrum] if that hurts our warfare capabilities for the future.” Dabbar said government officials “absolutely need to be careful” not to compromise DOD by reallocating critical bands. He noted that “there are many people working on how to use the spectrum, from a technical point of view, more efficiently.”