SPEED for BEAD Act
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Rep. Hudson, Richard [R-NC-9]
ID: H001067
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
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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 the 119th Congress. Let's dissect this abomination and expose its true intentions.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The SPEED for BEAD Act (because who doesn't love a good acronym?) claims to "improve" the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program. In reality, it's a thinly veiled attempt to further enrich telecom corporations while pretending to care about rural broadband access.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:**
* The bill redefines "gigabit-level broadband service" to include download speeds of at least 1,000 megabits per second. Wow, how generous. * It amends the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to allow for more "flexibility" in grant funding, which is code for "we're going to give more money to our corporate friends." * The bill prohibits certain conditions on bidding processes, including requirements related to prevailing wages, project labor agreements, and union workforces. Because who needs fair labor practices when you can have cheap labor? * It also eliminates reporting requirements for workforce composition and climate change. Because transparency is overrated.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:**
* Telecom corporations: They're the real winners here, as they'll receive more funding and fewer regulatory hurdles. * Rural communities: They might get some improved broadband access, but at what cost? The bill's focus on "efficiency" and "expansion" is just a euphemism for "we're going to prioritize profits over people." * Labor unions: They're the biggest losers, as the bill undermines their ability to negotiate fair wages and working conditions.
**Potential Impact & Implications:**
* This bill will further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of telecom corporations, exacerbating existing inequalities. * It will also perpetuate the myth that "broadband access" is a panacea for rural development, when in reality it's just one piece of a much larger puzzle. * By eliminating reporting requirements and labor protections, the bill will create an environment ripe for exploitation and corruption.
In conclusion, the SPEED for BEAD Act is a masterclass in legislative doublespeak. It's a bill that claims to promote "equity" and "access" while actually serving the interests of corporate elites. But hey, who needs honesty in politics when you can have clever acronyms and Orwellian language?
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
No campaign finance data available for Rep. Hudson, Richard [R-NC-9]
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
— 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 — 857 — Federal Communications Commission narrow—that pertain to the FCC’s authority, including most significantly the Telecommunications Act of 1996,28 which opened up markets for greater competition and largely deregulated industry segments. Technological change in the connectivity sector is occurring rapidly. We are now seeing an unprecedented level of convergence, innovation, and competition in the market for connectivity. On the one hand, traditional cable providers like Charter are now offering mobile wireless services to consumers in direct competition with traditional wireless companies like Verizon. On the other hand, a new generation of low-earth orbit satellite services like StarLink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper stand to offer high- speed home broadband in competition with legacy providers. Furthermore, broadcasters are offering high-speed downloads directly to consumers over spectrum that previously provided only TV service. These rapidly evolving market conditions counsel in favor of eliminating many of the heavy-handed FCC regulations that were adopted in an era when every technology operated in a silo. These include many of the FCC’s media ownership rules, which can have the effect of restricting investment and competition because those regulations assume a far more limited set of competitors for advertising dollars than exist today, as well as its universal service requirements. Ultimately, FCC reliance on competition and innovation is vital if the agency is to deliver optimal outcomes for the American public. The FCC should engage in a serious top-to-bottom review of its regulations and take steps to rescind any that are overly cumbersome or outdated. The Commission should focus its efforts on creating a market-friendly regulatory environment that fosters innovation and competition from a wide range of actors, including cable-based, broadband-based, and satellite- based Internet providers. AUTHOR’S NOTE: The preparation of this chapter was a collective enterprise of individuals involved in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. All contributors to this chapter are listed at the front of this volume. While this chapter identifies certain issues on which the contributors did not all agree, the author alone assumes responsibility for the content of this chapter, and no views expressed herein should be attributed to any other individual.
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.
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.