Ted Cruz Proudly Pledges To Kill Last Ditch Funding Effort For Popular Low-Income Broadband Program

We just noted how several Trumplican lawmakers recently killed a popular program that helped deliver a $30 discount off of the broadband bills of low income Americans. The FCC’s Affordable Care Program (ACP) was implemented during peak COVID, and proved immensely helpful to 22 million Americans, many of whom are now being booted off the internet because they can no longer afford access.

The mass exodus from the program resulted in Comcast and Charter last week reporting their biggest quarterly broadband subscriber losses in company histories.

Separately, we’ve reported how Congress completely screwed up a plan to rip “dangerous” Chinese-made Huawei network gear out of U.S. telecom networks; something they proposed with great fanfare and then just (whoops) forgot to fully fund. As a result, many smaller telecoms can’t afford to “rip and replace” the Huawei gear, resulting, you guessed it, in a chunk of people potentially losing access to broadband.

A new bipartisan bill proposes to fix both problems at once: the PLAN for broadband Act would dole out $7 billion in funding to help fund ACP, and another $3 billion to help fund efforts to replace Huawei network components with safer alternatives. A large chunk of the costs would be offset by FCC spectrum auction proceeds. This level of money is, if you’re new to the U.S., routinely wasted on much dumber fare.

Enter Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is now proudly declaring that he’ll work tirelessly to ensure the bipartisan bill doesn’t pass. Cruz claims he’s concerned about the cost of the program:

“This bill has no reform in it at all. It’s not paid for or offset in anyway.”

Consumer groups support the proposals. Telecom carriers support the proposals. Poor people certainly appreciate the help. The government certainly can afford it. There’s really no sense in Cruz’s opposition beyond performance, not least of which being that Cruz doesn’t actually care about fiscal responsibility.

Cruz is fully supportive of a Texas-based company like AT&T getting a $42 billion tax break for doing absolutely nothing. He’ll routinely have nothing to say if AT&T is accused of ripping off taxpayers and the nation’s school system. He’s the type of politician who’ll support no limit of wasteful subsidies to telecoms like Elon Musk’s Starlink, only drawing a line in the sand when it comes time to help poor people.

Ted’s facing an uncharacteristically tight race for Senate reelection in Texas thanks to a challenge by Rep. Colin Allred. Apparently Ted thinks the winning sauce involves giving a giant middle finger to poor families unable to afford broadband under the pretense he actually cares about fiscal responsibility.