Hill's USF Working Group to Resume Talks; Guthrie Sees Less Pressure After SCOTUS Ruling
Leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees who are spearheading the bipartisan congressional working group on a USF legislative revamp, which relaunched in June (see 2506120091), told us they plan to begin meeting again this month. But they said they feel less pressure to quickly reach an agreement on legislative recommendations since the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, which found that USF’s funding mechanism is constitutional (see 2506270054). Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and John Thune, R-S.D., formed the working group in 2023 as Communications Subcommittee chairman and ranking member, respectively (see 2305110066).
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Communications sector officials and lobbyists told us they expect the USF working group to use draft recommendations that its members began during the last Congress as at least a starting point in the renewed negotiations, but they may diverge because Republicans now control both chambers (see 2411270060). Working group members during the last Congress voiced interest in melding the FCC’s lapsed affordable connectivity program with USF’s Lifeline program and maintaining the latter’s narrower eligibility rules (see 2404170066).
Senate Communications Chair Deb Fischer, R-Neb., told us the reconstituted working group intends to begin meeting very soon now that Capitol Hill was able to “get through” passage of the HR-1 budget reconciliation package (see 2507030056). Fischer -- who replaced Thune as lead Republican on the subpanel and the working group following his January move to become Senate majority leader -- indicated she and Lujan are “in agreement” about goals for a USF legislative revamp. They're “really committed to making sure we can come to some consensus,” Fischer said.
House Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., told us he doesn’t “have a timeline” for when the USF working group will finalize legislative recommendations. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Consumers’ Research “takes some pressure off” lawmakers to expedite such legislation, Guthrie said. “We needed to reform USF [regardless of the high court’s decision, but] we would have needed to do something quick” had the justices decided to uphold the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against USF’s structure (see 2407240043).
Lujan and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif., are pushing for the working group to base any recommendations it makes in this Congress on the existing USF draft they were working through when talks largely paused after the 5th Circuit ruling left the program in legal limbo (see 2407300053). The group’s draft is “a strong working product that should be able to pass whether” Democrats or Republicans control Congress, Lujan told us. Those proposals are “going to be important to include in whatever modernization takes place.”
'Hard Issues' Remain
Matsui told us it’s “always good to go back to see” what parts of the draft recommendations still make sense to pursue in this Congress. “We haven’t met yet” because the reconciliation package fight has dominated the Hill for weeks, but participating lawmakers won't have a big learning curve, thanks to the group's previous work, she said. “We can just move ahead” now that the Supreme Court ruled on Consumers’ Research.
Former House Communications Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said he hopes the working group will give substantial weight to the draft he and other lawmakers produced during the last Congress. “You don’t really want to start from scratch, [because otherwise it will be] tough to get” a bill through in this Congress, Latta told us. “I felt good about where we were at [on the draft, but] we had some holdups over in the Senate” that foiled hopes of finalizing recommendations before 2024 ended.
Affordable Broadband Campaign President Greg Guice said the “clock is ticking, [but] Congress still has a good block of time” to act on USF. “There’s a pretty broad consensus on how it could be fixed, [and] we're hoping we can grease the skids on this and get it done before the next election,” he told us. Republicans may now be leaning toward “a more prescriptive statute that will tell” the FCC how broadly to expand the program’s contribution base instead of leaving it more open “to the rulemaking process.”
Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director Joey Wender said the USF working group’s dynamics haven’t “fundamentally changed [from the last Congress], and the goal of ensuring USF is strong and sustainable for decades to come remains the same.” Participating lawmakers “will approach [USF issues] in a similar way,” Wender said. The working group stands a good chance of releasing USF revamp recommendations before the end of this Congress, but both chambers reaching a deal to move legislation “would be harder to do” in that period.
Joe Kane, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation broadband and spectrum policy director, predicted that the working group will likely make the previous draft recommendations its “starting point” but cautioned that it may move in another direction, given that members weren’t able to reach a “consensus” on those proposals. “All the hard issues underlying that lack of consensus” remain, particularly about which entities should be part of an expanded contribution base, Kane told us.