Golden Fleece Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rep. French Hill (AR-02) named the U.S. Department of Commerce as the latest recipient of his Golden Fleece. Thanks to their bureaucratic red tape, three years after Congress appropriated over $42 billion to bring the internet to rural America, exactly zero Americans have been connected to the internet through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, Commerce allowed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to impose regulations so burdensome that states have found it difficult to implement the program as intended and instead prioritized the Administration’s sweeping agenda over practical concerns. 

Rep. Hill said, “Access to the internet is crucial for life in 2025. Too many places, particularly rural communities, still lack access to reliable high-speed internet, which disconnects them from the rest of the country. Congress made an investment to ensure all parts of the country are connected, but the Biden-Harris Administration’s implementation of the BEAD program has caused delays to the point that not a single state has begun to actually put federal funds toward this project. This is unacceptable. Too many Americans are still waiting on a promise made to them by their government nearly four years ago. I am heartened by Secretary Lutnick’s review of BEAD, and I encourage him to ditch the misguided priorities of the past Administration. It is time to end the unnecessarily stringent requirements and for the funds to actually start delivering results for the American people.” 

In a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, Rep. Hill writes:

I write today to inform you that the United States Department of Commerce (Commerce) is the most recent recipient of my Golden Fleece Award. I am awarding this to Commerce for your Department’s command of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and for the Biden-Harris Administration’s dawdling and obtuse implementation of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that was authorized under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), P.L. 117-58.

The BEAD program became law as a part of the IIJA, with Congress allocating more than $42 billion dollars to connect rural parts of the country to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet. IIJA passed the House by a vote of 228-205 and was signed into law by former President Biden on November 15, 2021. To date, the program has been a disappointment as no individuals have been connected to the internet yet nor have any state projects begun implementation in the three and a half years since this program was created. 

The most significant reason for these delays in providing access has been because of burdensome regulations and stifling bureaucracy. Requirements for states to receive BEAD funding include forcing them to go through a cumbersome five-step process that has been completed by only three states to date. In November 2024, NTIA finally announced that all 50 states and territories had their initial BEAD proposals approved even though states had to complete their applications nearly a year earlier. NTIA’s bureaucracy and regulatory red tape has slowed this preliminary step that merely makes states eligible to obtain the funding needed to begin working on projects to increase internet accessibility.

A few of the obstacles that have hindered the rollout of BEAD include extraneous mandates to account for potential risk related to climate change; discriminatory requirements to prioritize hiring “individuals with past criminal records,” union workers, and other “justice-impacted” people to install broadband equipment; and definitions of “priority broadband projects” and “reliable broadband service.”  

BEAD regulations have left state broadband offices that are ill-expertized to assess for climate change to conduct these studies. They have also left states that struggle to meet unnecessary labor requirements and in which the NTIA’s one-size-fits-all approach to prioritize fiber-exclusive projects rather than flexibility to meet the geographic needs and conditions of the state and individuals scrambling. Moreover, the BEAD program prioritizes equity over practicality. Washington, D.C. is slated to receive the minimum $100 million to connect 184 unserved locations – of which 58 alone are in the Smithsonian National Zoo. Delaware had previously received more than $46 million in federal tax dollars to build broadband to unserved locations across the state, which will be compounded by a duplicative $108 million from BEAD that is designed to provide broadband to seven times fewer locations than the existing funding is supposed to. These frivolous allocations are interconnected with the NTIA withholding $849 million of BEAD’s funding to administer this program and all its imprudent regulatory requirements. 

As a result of these regulations, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr stated that BEAD’s goal to provide high-speed internet to underserved areas will not be fully realized until 2030. Additionally, under current requirements, projects will not begin implementation until this year or next. Instead of focusing on connecting Americans to the internet, NTIA and the Biden-Harris Administration valued creating new bureaucratic jobs and inserting their broad political agenda into as many government programs as possible, often conflicting with Congressional intent and deterring expedient deployment.

I commend your announcement in March to lead a rigorous review of the BEAD program and revamp the program. The program is currently restricted by unassociated requirements, favoritism, and even potentially illegal acts, such as rate regulation, that delay infrastructure construction and waste time and money. However, I encourage you to carefully make adjustments to the requirements for BEAD funding that do not completely undo state plans, forcing the states to further delay implementation of broadband projects. 

Rural areas have been waiting a long time for broadband service, and ensuring that all central Arkansans have access to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet is a top priority of mine. I understand that the BEAD program is aspirational in its goals, but the process for implementing these projects so that American households can be connected across the country must be expedited. The Biden-Harris administration prioritized bureaucratic red tape over the American people. I trust that with your leadership the BEAD program can get to work on providing the internet access to Americans nationwide that was promised but has yet to be delivered. I encourage you to take the necessary steps to ensure that projects can begin as soon as possible and to work with me and my colleagues in Congress to remove the statutory requirements that have hampered NTIA’s ability to act and break ground on the projects that will build this infrastructure across the country.

I am committed to ensuring effective fiscal practices at our Nation’s federal agencies. Should you require any additional authority from Congress to address these concerns, I urge you to notify us as soon as possible. I would also welcome any technical assistance you could provide to Congress to correct statutory issues that may have contributed to this problem. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to working with you to address this important issue.