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The fight to ensure internet access for low-income Americans
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Every once in a while, a bipartisan group of lawmakers comes together to support a popular policy that fulfills the interests of industry leaders and everyday Americans alike. These instances are supposed to be the slam dunks of legislating, a time for lawmakers to prove they are interested in governing to the advantage of their constituents.
It’s all easier said than done.
So it goes with the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act, bipartisan and bicameral legislation to fund a program that aims to provide 23 million households with affordable internet access. Unless the Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP, receives an additional $7 billion in funding from Congress, April will be the final full month that households will receive the benefit. In early February, the program stopped accepting new enrollment.
"It’s a good thing that the program has broad bipartisan support. It’s a terrible thing that no one has been able to figure out how to turn that support into actual dollars for the program," said Greg Guice, chief policy officer at the Vernonberg Group and spokesperson for the Affordable Broadband Campaign.
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As a supplemental funding request, the ACP Extension Act was designed to be attached to a larger legislative vehicle. This week, Congress is considering the second tranche of bills to fund the government for the current fiscal year. It’s unlikely that the bill will be tacked onto this spending minibus, and it’s unclear when another opportunity to approve the additional funding for the ACP might arise. So the Federal Communications Commission, telecommunications companies, and low-income Americans alike are bracing for the end of the program.
Senator Peter Welch, the Democrat who introduced the bill in the Senate, said that while the funding bill was not the "last opportunity" to approve the ACP Extension Act, it nevertheless represented "the best opportunity" to get the measure over the goal line. "The ACP has a lot of support, but finding a vehicle to include it, on a practical level, is the challenge," Welch told me.
The ACP provides up to $30 monthly discounts on internet bills for low-income families and up to $75 monthly discounts for eligible households on tribal lands. It is used by low-income Americans in urban, suburban, and rural areas; it benefits families in red and blue states alike. Indeed, eight of the states that rank highest for enrollment—Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Oklahoma—are largely controlled by Republicans. In November, 26 governors of both parties sent a letter to congressional leaders requesting Congress work with the Biden administration to extend the program.
According to a recent national survey by the Benenson Strategy Group, 49 percent of ACP participants are military families and 19 percent are households with seniors. That same report found that 95 percent of participants said they would struggle with costs if the program is not reauthorized, 75 percent said they fear losing online health care services, 65 percent fear job loss, and 81 percent of parent participants would worry about their child falling behind in school.
Research by the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society has shown that the ACP has helped connect more Americans to the internet. In a recent ethnographic survey, the AARP further found that internet access helps older Americans maintain connections and adapt to a changing world, with participants calling the loss of the ACP "unthinkable." Some reports also demonstrate a clear economic benefit: Recent analysis by Benton found that every dollar
spent on ACP subsidies "returns nearly two dollars in impacts to those using the program."
ACP supporters outside of Congress comprise a broad coalition, from telecommunications companies like AT&T and Verizon to advocacy groups like the NAACP, the AARP, and the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s also popular with voters: A recent poll by the Digital Progress Institute found that majorities of Republican, independent, and Democratic voters support extending the ACP.
Nevertheless, the program has its detractors. Some Republican lawmakers have questioned whether ending the ACP would truly result in millions of Americans losing their internet access, with several writing in a December letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that "it appears the vast majority of tax dollars have gone to households that already had broadband prior to the subsidy." Senator Ted Cruz has also argued that the ACP is redundant, given a preexisting program called Lifeline intended to lower the cost of broadband. (The discount offered by Lifeline is far lower than that of the ACP, and it also has more stringent eligibility requirements.)
However, a recent survey by the FCC found that 68 percent of ACP recipients had inconsistent or no internet service prior to enrolling in the program, with the majority of those respondents citing affordability as the biggest roadblock to obtaining service. The survey also found that 29 percent of participants would drop their internet service provider if they no longer received the $30 discount monthly. The ACP—which was established by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law—replaced the pandemic-era Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, which had around nine million participants. Many who received subsidies through that program then transferred to its successor.
With congressional action uncertain, the FCC is preparing for the wind-down of the ACP. Participants may receive a partial ACP benefit in May, with the amount determined by individual service providers. Qualifying ACP participants earning under a certain threshold could apply for Lifeline, although several providers that participate in ACP do not also participate in Lifeline. Some cities and states have their own internet subsidy programs, and several internet service providers have discounts for low-income and elderly users.
Even if Congress did approve legislation to extend the ACP, it would only keep the program solvent for the next year. A longer-term solution, Guice said, would be for the FCC to expand its revenue base for the universal service fund, which collects money from telecommunications companies with the goal of providing universal internet access. Unlike the ACP, the universal service fund is not subject to the congressional appropriations process.
"What we have now proven, I believe, is that if you leave it to Congress to figure out how to help low-income families get broadband, they’re clearly going to get it wrong," said Guice. "That failure demonstrates why we cannot let low-income broadband services be provided for through the appropriations process."
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Join us on April 8 for a high-profile live and livestreamed event to celebrate Right to Read Day, a day of action launched by Unite Against Book Bans to encourage communities to stand up to censorship.
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Vibe check: Progress on special immigrant visas for Afghans
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Each week, I provide an update on the vibes surrounding a particular policy or political development. This week: an agreement to increase the number of resettlement visas for Afghan allies.
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The funding minibus that will theoretically be approved by Congress in the coming days includes a provision to add 12,000 special immigrant visas, or SIVs, for Afghans who helped the United States during its war in Afghanistan. The current cap is 38,500 SIVs, a congressionally authorized limit that was expected to be reached around the August anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
This number falls short of the 20,000 additional visas sought by the Biden administration. Still, advocates are celebrating the increase as a qualified victory—an improvement on the current situation, if still insufficient to address the overarching need.
"It’s not a silver bullet, but it is rare in this work that we’re able to celebrate our victories," said Shawn VanDiver, the founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition that helped to evacuate Afghans during the withdrawal. The authorization of additional SIVs provides "breathing room" for the program, as it grants additional time before the cap is reached and helps thousands of Afghans eligible for SIVs in the U.S. who arrived before completing their application process.
Adam Bates, the supervisory policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, said in a statement that the "authorization of additional visas extends a vital lifeline for Afghans who risked their lives on behalf of the U.S. mission in their country, but it’s not nearly enough to fulfill the promises the U.S. government made to Afghan allies." IRAP has undertaken a class-action lawsuit challenging federal delays in SIV application processing.
"With an application backlog of more than 100,000 applicants, many of whom have waited for years, Congress must continue authorizing additional visas until every eligible applicant has one," Bates said.
Representative Jason Crow, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, said that Congress would need to approve more SIVs next year. "We think [it] gives us time over the next year to process those who are in the immediate pipeline and have passed the chief admission approval or prepared for interviews, but certainly next year we’ll have to go back for more," Crow said. The State Department has said that the agency is issuing 1,000 visas per month, meaning that the additional 12,000 will likely not last as long as some advocates would hope.
Remember the previous segment of this newsletter, when I talked about bipartisan and bicameral bills that, for whatever reason, are unable to pass? One such measure is the Afghan Adjustment Act, legislation that would expand eligibility for SIVs, streamline the SIV application and approval process, authorize additional SIVs, and provide Afghan evacuees paroled into the U.S. who are not eligible for SIVs with a pathway to permanent residency. A group of senators unsuccessfully attempted to tack on an amendment based on the Afghan Adjustment Act to a national security supplemental bill approved last month. (Another, slightly narrower bipartisan bill, the Afghan Allies Protection Act, has also been unable to garner sufficient support to be approved.)
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a co-sponsor of the Afghan Adjustment Act in the Senate, echoed the sentiment that increased SIV numbers were preferable to inaction. "Any number is better than none, but I still hope the Afghan Adjustment Act will be approved," Blumenthal said.
Another co-sponsor of the bill, Republican Senator Jerry Moran, also praised the addition of SIVs to the minibus even as he called for the passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act. "I don’t think it diminishes the political support or the need for the Afghan Adjustment Act, but it will help many Afghans who helped the United States have a future," Moran told me.
However, with thousands of Afghans paroled into the U.S. having already applied for asylum, VanDiver worried that passing the Afghan Adjustment Act might eventually become a moot point. "I’d like to see adjustment, but the challenge is that Congress doesn’t seem willing to do it," said VanDiver. "We’ll have most of the asylum [claims] adjudicated for these Afghans by the time Congress passes anything."
Helal Massomi, the Afghan policy adviser at Global Refuge, a refugee advocacy and resettlement organization, argued that passing the Afghan Adjustment Act when it was first introduced would have solved some of the issues relating to SIV availability and backlog. "If there is a problem with SIVs right now, it’s because Congress doesn’t act on time, or act at all," said Massomi, who herself had to evacuate from Afghanistan. "If they don’t pass the Afghan Adjustment Act, we will keep facing these kinds of problems."
Moran said that "the urgency seems to be missing" from those in Congress who do not support the bill. "Even when there’s a sense of urgency around here, things happen without a lot of urgency," Moran noted wryly.
Massomi also noted the time crunch regarding the impending presidential election. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, issued a ban on people from Muslim-majority countries entering the U.S. as one of his first acts in office, and may be less inclined to support efforts to expand SIV access.
"It’s time for the leadership in the House, the leadership in the Senate, to do something. If the administration changes, if we have another president, it will be extremely hard for Afghans to be resettled here," Massomi said.
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Want to have your pet included at the bottom of the next newsletter? Email me: gsegers@tnr.com.
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This week’s featured pet was submitted by The New Republic’s own Alex Shephard. Harriet is nine and a half. "Last year, she barked 19 times. This year, she has barked zero times," Alex says. "Sweet and stubborn, she is as fiercely loyal to her many friends as she is to her numerous enemies (the bus, the street sweeper, shopping carts, plastic bags blowing in the wind)."
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Team Trump is doing something this time around that it didn’t think to do in 2016: It’s planning. And wait until you see what those plans include.
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