Standard FEES Act
Download PDFSponsored by
Rep. Palmer, Gary J. [R-AL-6]
ID: P000609
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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Latest Action
Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 49 - 0.
December 3, 2025
Introduced
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
Committee Review
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of Reps. Palmer and Ryan. The Standard FEES Act - because what America really needs is more fees to expedite the already-glacial pace of bureaucratic evaluation.
Let's dissect this tumor:
**New Regulations:** A uniform fee schedule for processing forms related to communications facilities on federal property. Because, you know, the current system was just too... unpredictable. (Sarcasm alert: I'm sure it had nothing to do with the $100K+ donated by telecom PACs to Rep. Palmer's campaign.)
**Affected Industries:** Telecommunications, construction, and anyone who dares to interact with federal property. You know, the usual suspects.
**Compliance Requirements:** Executive agencies must adopt these new fees within 120 days of the Administrator of General Services establishing them. Because what could possibly go wrong with rushed implementation?
**Enforcement Mechanisms and Penalties:** Ah, the fun part! Any fee collected by an executive agency can only be used to cover processing costs - a clever way to ensure that agencies will magically find ways to "cover" those costs without actually doing any real work. And if they don't comply? Well, there's no mention of penalties, but I'm sure the Congressional Oversight Committee (aka the "We're Too Busy Fundraising to Actually Oversee Anything" committee) will be all over it.
**Economic and Operational Impacts:** This bill is a masterclass in regulatory capture. By establishing a uniform fee schedule, the telecom industry gets to dictate how much they'll pay for access to federal property - a nice little gift from their friends in Congress. Meanwhile, smaller players in the market will be priced out by these new fees, ensuring that only the big boys get to play. It's like a game of regulatory musical chairs, and everyone but the telecom giants is about to get left standing.
Diagnosis: This bill has all the symptoms of a classic case of "Regulatory Capture-itis" - a disease where politicians become infected with the desire to please their corporate donors at the expense of actual governance. Treatment: a healthy dose of skepticism and a strong stomach for the inevitable corruption that follows.
Prognosis: The Standard FEES Act will likely pass with flying colors, thanks to the generous support of telecom PACs and the usual Congressional suspects who can't resist a good game of "Follow the Money." Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left to wonder why our internet bills keep going up while our speeds remain stuck in the slow lane.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Palmer, Gary J. [R-AL-6]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Donor Network - Rep. Palmer, Gary J. [R-AL-6]
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Total contributions: $192,051
Top Donors - Rep. Palmer, Gary J. [R-AL-6]
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 847 — Federal Communications Commission The FCC has facilitated the transition from 3G to 4G and now 5G offerings in two ways. First, it has freed spectrum—the airwaves needed to deliver wireless ser- vices. Second, it has preempted state and local siting and permitting laws that could otherwise slow down the buildout of next-generation infrastructure. One of the FCC’s great success stories from 2017 to 2020 was securing U.S. leadership in 5G. The FCC also administers an approximately roughly $9 billion-a-year program called the Universal Service Fund (USF), which has been funded by a line-item charge that traditional telephone companies add to consumers’ monthly bills. Expenditures from this fund subsidize rural broadband networks and low-income programs as well as connections for schools, libraries, and rural health care facil- ities. Through various COVID-era laws, Congress has also provided the FCC with a one-time $24 billion appropriation for various low-income initiatives. POLICY PRIORITIES The FCC needs to change course and bring new urgency to achieving four main goals: l Reining in Big Tech, l Promoting national security, l Unleashing economic prosperity, and l Ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.15 Reining in Big Tech. The FCC has an important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market. Nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square. Today, a handful of corporations can shape everything from the information we consume to the places we shop. These corporate behemoths are not merely exercising market power; they are abusing dominant positions. They are not simply prevailing in the free market; they are taking advantage of a landscape that has been skewed—in many cases by the government—to favor their business models over those of their competitors. It is hard to imagine another industry in which a greater gap exists between power and accountability. That is why a new Adminis- tration should support FCC action on several fronts. Specifically, the FFC should: l Eliminate immunities that courts added to Section 230. The FCC should issue an order that interprets Section 230 in a way that eliminates the expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute. — 848 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise As one of the FCC’s previous General Counsels noted, the FCC has authority to take this action because Section 230 is codified in the Communications Act.16 The FCC’s Section 230 reforms should track the positions outlined in a July 2020 Petition for Rulemaking filed at the FCC near the end of the Trump Administration.17 Any new presidential Administration should consider filing a similar or new petition. As Justice Clarence Thomas has made clear, courts have construed Section 230 broadly to confer on some of the world’s largest companies a sweeping immunity that is found nowhere in the text of the statute.18 They have done so in a way that nullifies the limits Congress placed on the types of actions that Internet companies can take while continuing to benefit from Section 230. One way to start correcting this error is for the FCC to remind courts how the various portions of Section 230 operate. At the outset, the FCC can clarify that Section 230(c)(1) does not apply broadly to every decision that a platform makes. Rather, its protections apply only when a platform does not remove information provided by someone else. In contrast, the FCC should clarify that the more limited Section 230(c)(2) protections apply to any covered platform’s decision to restrict access to material provided by someone else. Combined, these actions will appropriately limit the number of cases in which a platform can censor with the benefit of Section 230’s protections. Such clarifications might also include drawing out the traditional legal distinction between distributor and publisher liability; Section 230 did not do away with the former, nor does it collapse into the latter. l Impose transparency rules on Big Tech. Today, Big Tech offers a black box. After Google manipulates search results, a small business can see its web traffic drop precipitously overnight for no apparent reason, potentially flipping its outlook from black to red. On Facebook, social media posts are left up or taken down, accounts suspended or permanently banned, without any apparent consistency. Out of the blue, YouTube can demonetize individuals who have risked their capital and invested their labor to build online businesses. At present, the FCC requires broadband providers to comply with a transparency rule that can provide a good baseline for Big Tech. Under the FCC’s rule, broadband providers must provide detailed disclosures about practices that would shape Internet traffic—from blocking to prioritizing or discriminating against content. The FCC could take a similar approach to
Introduction
— 850 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise It should be noted at this point that the views expressed here are not shared uniformly by all conservatives. There are some, including contributors to this chapter, who do not think that the FCC or Congress should act in a way that regulates the content-moderation decisions of private platforms. One of the main arguments that this group offers is that doing so would intrude— unlawfully in their view—on the First Amendment rights of corporations to exclude content from their private platforms. l Require that Big Tech begin to contribute a fair share. Big Tech has avoided accountability in several additional ways as well. One of them concerns the FCC’s roughly $9 billion Universal Service Fund. This initiative provides the support necessary to subsidize the agency’s affordable Internet and rural connectivity programs. The FCC obtains this funding through a line-item charge that carriers add to consumers’ monthly bills for traditional telecommunications service. While Big Tech derives tremendous value from the federal government’s universal service investments—using those federally supported networks to deliver their products and realize significant profits—these large corporations have avoided paying a fair share into the program. On top of that, the FCC’s current funding mechanism has been on an unsustainable path.21 By requiring traditional telephone customers to contribute to a fund that is being used increasingly to support broadband networks, the FCC’s current approach is the regulatory equivalent of taxing horseshoes to pay for highways. To put the FCC’s universal service program on a stable footing, Congress should require Big Tech companies to start contributing an appropriate amount. Conservatives are not unanimous in agreeing that the FCC should expand the USF contribution base. Instead, some argue that Congress should revisit the program’s entire funding structure and determine whether to continue subsidizing the provision of service. Future funding decisions, the argument goes, should be made by Congress through the normal appropriation process through which the USF program can compete for funding with other national initiatives. These decisions should be made with an eye to right-sizing the federal government’s existing broadband initiatives in light of both technological advances and the recent influx of billions of dollars in new appropriations that can be used to support efforts to end the digital divide. Protecting America’s National Security. During the Trump Administra- tion, the FCC ushered in a new and appropriately strong approach to the national — 851 — Federal Communications Commission security threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During that time, the FCC eliminated federal subsidies for telecommunications equipment from Huawei and ZTE, thereby greatly reducing the chances of that equipment finding a way into our nation’s communications networks. The FCC also stood up a program to rip and replace insecure network gear to ensure that it did not remain a threat lurking inside our systems. The FCC revoked or denied the licenses of carriers like China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, which presented unacceptable national security risks. There are, however, additional strong actions that the FCC can and should take to address the CCP’s malign campaign. Specifically: l Address TikTok’s threat to U.S. national security. As law enforcement officials have made clear, TikTok poses a serious and unacceptable risk to America’s national security.22 It also provides Beijing with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign by determining the news and information that the app feeds to millions of Americans. As of this writing, the Biden Administration’s Treasury Department has not announced a final decision concerning its long-pending review of TikTok. If that inaction persists, or if the Administration allows TikTok to continue to operate in the U.S., a new Administration should ban the application on national security grounds. l Expand the FCC’s Covered List. The FCC maintains a list of communications equipment and services that pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States. It is known as the Covered List.23 Huawei is one of the companies on the Covered List, and its inclusion means that the FCC will no longer review or approve new applications from Huawei. Without FCC approval, new Huawei gear cannot be lawfully sold or used in the U.S. However, the FCC must do a better job of ensuring that its Covered List stays up to date and accounts for changes in corporate names and forms. Therefore, a new Administration should create a more regular and timely process for reviewing entities with ties to the CCP’s surveillance state. l End the unregulated end run. As noted above, China Telecom and similar entities have been banned from operating in the U.S. in a manner that would require an FCC license or authorization because of the national security risks that those entities pose. However, many of these same entities are still operating in the U.S. and offering services very similar to the ones that they are prohibited from providing. China Telecom, for instance, continues to provide services to data centers by offering the services on a private or “unregulated” basis. A new Administration should work with the FCC to close this loophole. One way to do so would be for the FCC to prohibit any regulated carrier from interconnecting with an insecure provider.
Introduction
— 855 — Federal Communications Commission so a new Administration should redouble efforts to require timely reviews and final actions by agencies with jurisdiction over federal lands, including the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. l Advance America’s space leadership. One of the most significant technological developments of the past few years has been the emergence of a new generation of low-earth orbit satellites like StarLink and Kuiper. This technology can beam a reliable, high-speed Internet signal to nearly any part of the globe at a fraction of the cost of other technologies. This has the potential to significantly accelerate efforts to end the digital divide and disrupt the federal regulatory and subsidy regime that applies to communications networks. The FCC should expedite its work to support this new technology by acting more quickly in its review and approval of applications to launch new satellites. Otherwise, the U.S. risks ceding space leadership to entities based in countries with more friendly regulatory environments. Holding Government Accountable. Federal technology and telecommunica- tions programs have been plagued by a troubling lack of accountability and good governance. They would benefit from stronger oversight and a fresh look at elim- inating outdated regulations that are doing more harm than good. l End wasteful broadband spending policies. Many of the broadband spending policies being pursued by the current Administration are poised to waste taxpayer money while leaving rural communities and unconnected Americans behind. At the same time, the dramatic recent increases in funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act mean that the federal government has more than enough resources to meet its broadband connectivity goals. Congress should therefore hold the agencies accountable so that taxpayer money is used effectively to promote broadband connectivity across the nation. To that end, the next Administration should instruct the various departments and agencies that are administering broadband infrastructure funds to direct those resources to communities without adequate Internet infrastructure instead of to places that already enjoy broadband connectivity. Take, for example, the final rules that the Treasury Department adopted in 2022 that govern the expenditure of $350 billion in ARPA funds. Rather than directing those dollars to the rural and other communities that have no Internet infrastructure, the current — 856 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Administration gave the green light for recipients to spend those funds to overbuild existing high-speed networks in communities that already have multiple broadband providers. A new Administration should eliminate government-funded overbuilding of existing networks. l Adopt a national coordinating strategy. Hundreds of billions of infrastructure dollars have been appropriated by Congress or budgeted by agencies over the past couple of years that can be used to end the digital divide. Yet, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “U.S. broadband efforts are not guided by a national strategy”; instead, “[f]ederal broadband efforts are fragmented and overlapping, with more than 100 programs administered by 15 agencies,” risking overbuilding as well as wasteful duplication.26 Many of these programs remain plagued by inefficiency, further contributing to waste of limited taxpayer dollars. Moreover, the federal government is failing to put appropriate guardrails in place to govern the expenditure of billions in broadband funds. This is the regulatory equivalent of turning the spigot on full blast and then walking away from the hose. There is a worrisome lack of adequate tracking, measurement, and accountability standards governing all of this broadband spending. As a result, we are likely to see headline levels of waste, fraud, and abuse. A new Administration needs to bring fresh oversight to this spending and put a national strategy in place to ensure that the federal government adopts a coordinated approach to its various broadband initiatives. Similarly, the next Administration should ask the FCC to launch a review of its existing broadband programs, including the different components of the USF, with the goal of avoiding duplication, improving efficiency of existing programs, and saving taxpayer money. l Correct the FCC’s regulatory trajectory and encourage competition to improve connectivity. The FCC is a New Deal–era agency. Its history of regulation tends to reflect the view that the federal government should impose heavy-handed regulation rather than relying on competition and market forces to produce optimal outcomes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recommended that Congress create the FCC in February 1934 for the purposes of establishing “a single Government agency charged with broad authority” over the field of communications.27 Congress subsequently established the FCC through the Communications Act of 1934. Congress has passed a number of additional statutes—some broad, some
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.