Lutnick Says New BEAD Funding Notice Coming Friday; Capito Undecided on CPB
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told members of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee (CJS) on Thursday that NTIA will likely issue a promised notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for its $42.5 billion BEAD program on Friday. It will require all states to resubmit their applications. Meanwhile, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., who chairs the Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee, told us she remains on the fence about President Donald Trump’s proposal to claw back $1.1 billion in advance CPB funding as part of a rescission package that congressional GOP leaders want expedited (see 2506030065).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The new BEAD NOFO will specify that “if you are a state that is willing to just be technologically agnostic [and] produce the right access at the lowest price, or if it's a tie … make that application within 90 days, and [Commerce] will put out the money by the end of the year,” Lutnick told House Appropriations CJS Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. “So we will go from not having given any money under the Biden administration [to] having the full program funded and distributed" to applicants that are technology-neutral.
Lutnick drew a more positive reception from House Appropriations CJS than he encountered when he announced the impending NOFO during Wednesday's Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee hearing on the Commerce Department’s FY 2026 budget request (see 2506040060). Some Democrats during that hearing sharply criticized Lutnick’s approach. Only Republicans asked him questions on the issue during the House Appropriations hearing Thursday. “Thank you for keeping the taxpayers in mind,” said Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va.
“What we've asked all the states to do is rebid, just with reasonable technology, and then we'll get the money out the door,” Lutnick told Cline. “There are three ways … we get the benefit of the bargain [that Congress sought when it] authorized broadband access across” the U.S. via BEAD. “You can do it by fiber, you can do it [via Wi-Fi and other fixed wireless], and of course, there's satellite,” Lutnick said: “Whichever is the most efficient option to get somebody broadband … should be the only rule. Let's have the outcome be the determiner, and if it's a tie, then, of course, we don't care at all which one you pick. But don't” prioritize fiber, as NTIA did in its original NOFO.
Lutnick's Senate testimony Wednesday sowed confusion about BEAD, New Street’s Blair Levin said Thursday. Levin questioned whether Lutnick meant to say that NTIA would launch a new NOFO or “just offer new guidance.” While Lutnick “used the term NOFO he may have meant guidance,” Levin told investors. The commerce secretary also “appeared to emphasize technological neutrality and getting the cheapest price per user and then promised to get the money out by the end of” 2025. Levin said the “problem with that is that if the states had a fiber preference and were not focused on the cheapest price per user, [they] not only have to provide a new plan, but they also may have to rerun their bidding process, which will go on longer than Lutnick suggested.”
House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and CJS ranking member Grace Meng, D-N.Y., faulted Lutnick for the Commerce Department not posting more details of its FY26 spending plan. “This information is legally required" as part of a bipartisan 2022 agreement, though Commerce is "not the only agency that is not in compliance,” DeLauro said. The White House OMB earlier this year “stopped posting these documents. This is illegal, and it's a slap in the face to the principle of transparency, accountability and government spending, which this administration claims to champion.”
Capito told us she hasn’t had a chance to fully review the language in the OMB rescissions memo that claws back CPB funding or speak with colleagues about it. “I’m not sure where we go from here” yet, she said. “There's a lot of talk that the time of NPR" -- and PBS, which both get money from CPB -- "has sort of passed and that it's been taken hostage by left-leaning or not-objective forces, and should our government really be paying for that?”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on the floor Wednesday that what Trump’s rescission proposal “would do is gut funding that is already appropriated for public broadcasting, [which] reaches nearly 99% of Americans with free programming, delivering lifesaving emergency alerts [and other] vital” programming. Trump “has decided to try to claw back the money Congress has already provided, I guess, to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthy,” Klobuchar said. “This would be particularly devastating [in Minnesota, which] has a long history of public radio and TV programming.”