CRA Undoing FCC's 2024 E-rate Hot Spots Order Heads to House After Senate Approval

The lead sponsor of S.J.Res. 7, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us after Thursday's vote that he's optimistic “it will pass” the House easily after clearing the upper chamber with unanimous GOP support. Cruz notably won over a handful of Republicans who S.J.Res. 7 opponents believed might vote against the measure (see 2505060032), including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

Sullivan said Thursday that Cruz “presented strong evidence” in favor of rolling back the FCC’s order, while “I didn’t have any Democratic colleagues reach out” to persuade him to oppose S.J.Res. 7. “Nobody in Alaska was using” the off-campus hot spots that the FCC order made eligible for E-rate funding, Sullivan told us. “I’m a huge E-rate supporter [and was concerned] that this was undermining the ability to get rural E-rate money and programs to states like” Alaska. “I had a lot of questions and dug into this one big.”

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., told us he “strongly hope[s] that the House takes time [for lawmakers] to talk to their constituents and all of the students who benefit from these Wi-Fi hot spots to get their homework done. I’m still hopeful that the House will do the right thing” and not pass S.J.Res. 7. Lujan cautioned that “my House colleagues need to understand that if they vote for this, they’re telling the FCC" that it can’t issue similar rules in the future, "as opposed to coming back and look[ing] at the program” to revamp it.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., disputed claims from the FCC order's opponents on the floor Thursday night, including that extending E-rate funding to off-campus hot spots “is wasteful.” The FCC’s rule “limits the amount of money that can be requested by any rate applicant and prohibits the duplication of the funding,” he said. “This repeal will not save the taxpayer a dime. ... All it does is strip away a lifeline for the children in our nation who need it the most.” Markey said claims that the FCC order “is illegal [are] simply untrue” because Congress in Communications Act Section 254 “provided the FCC with flexibility to adapt the E-rate program for changing times and educational conditions.”

Fight 'Not Over'

Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director Joey Wender told us the “fight is not over, and we're hopeful that the House will see this resolution as harmful to students and library patrons around the country, particularly in rural and low-income areas.” SHLB, the American Library Association and three other groups jointly expressed “strong disappointment” in the Senate’s vote. Michael Calabrese, director of New America’s Wireless Future Program said in a statement that “Senate Republicans have voted to end the one remaining universal service program that helps schools connect kids in need to the internet at home and outside of school hours.”

Wender pointed to a raft of unknowns about how the House will proceed on S.J.Res. 7. “Momentum for this resolution has always been in the Senate and not the House,” he told us. “It is unknown whether the House remains uninterested in this resolution generally or whether it now picks up steam” there. House Communications Subcommittee member Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, sponsored a companion to S.J.Res. 7 (H.J.Res. 33), but it had no co-sponsors as of Thursday.

Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer told us the House appeared to be “seeing how things played out in the Senate” and would likely take up S.J.Res. 7 simply because of the momentum following Senate passage. “I imagine that it's going to be another party-line vote, which is more difficult in the House,” where the GOP holds a tighter 220-213 majority, Thayer said. But “I think it's going to play out somewhat similarly to” Republicans’ successful 2017 CRA resolution that rescinded the FCC's ISP privacy rules (see 1704170048). “That wasn't an easy vote either, but they were able to get it done,” he said: “If there is a successful path forward, that would be the framework I would use.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who voted against the FCC’s order last year, hailed the Senate on Thursday for issuing a “rare rebuke” to the commission for its bid to “extend COVID-era spending indefinitely and in excess of the agency’s statutory” mandate. Conversely, Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez said a rollback of the FCC’s order “will only deepen [the digital] divide by stripping away one of the few remaining tools available to schools and libraries to help students and seniors access the internet.”