Guest Author
For all of those — me included — who lament the death of bipartisan governance in Washington, D.C., the infrastructure bill that just passed in Congress is a rare example of how the parties can still work together on bills that really matter.
The bill’s passage was great news for Florida. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our roads and bridges a disappointing C- grade in its latest report card. And Florida still has a big digital divide — our less affluent citizens are offline in alarming numbers. There is a lot of work to do, and this bill addresses both challenges.
The good news is that, unlike our roads and bridges, American broadband networks are in pretty good shape. High-speed infrastructure reaches an estimated 96% of American homes, offering faster speeds and more widespread rural reach than in more regulated systems like those in Europe.
The problem is that at least 14 million Americans in rural areas aren’t reached by broadband wires, which puts unconnected communities at a huge disadvantage and was a life-or-death difference during COVID-19, when schooling, health care and work all shifted online.
And even in urban and some suburban areas where broadband is ubiquitous, one-in-four households still don’t sign up. This adoption gap stems from a range of factors — cost, digital literacy, alienation from the online economy and other sociological factors. Black, Brown and low-income families are least likely to connect where broadband is available.
Let’s go back to the good news. The Senate-passed bill is a major step forward for both our governance and infrastructure. The bipartisan package includes a $42 billion commitment to build world-class broadband in communities that don’t have it, along with $14 billion to offer low-income households a subsidy of up to $30 a month to sign up for home internet service.
The bill’s approach to rural buildouts is targeted and surgical, with smart protections against wasting taxpayer dollars on redundant projects in areas that already have high-speed networks. These guardrails are critical to avoid repeating the waste and mismanagement that plagued the 2009 stimulus broadband programs.
And the low-income subsidies model has already been shown to work: A temporary version — the Emergency Broadband Benefit, enacted with strong bipartisan support in December — has already signed up more than 5 million low-income households.
Getting this bill across the finish line was a big deal because it shows the nation — and the extreme partisans on both the left and right — that Washington can still govern and get things done.
But now that the bill has passed, we’ll need more of this bipartisan cooperation to make sure the dollars are spent wisely and effectively. We need to stay laser-focused on the core goals here: building networks to reach every unserved area and helping broadband holdouts get online where fast networks already exist.
We’ll blow this opportunity if we let special interests divert the money for unnecessary, duplicative projects or ideologues hijack the funding for their own agenda. That lack of focus helped sink the broadband programs in the 2009 stimulus program, which spent billions with very little to show for it. We must remain vigilant against repeating those mistakes.
Some, for example, want local city halls to get in the business of building and operating municipal broadband. But municipal broadband projects are a fool’s errand with a poor track record of failure and left-field demands like these risk destroying bipartisan support.
This is a time to say no to the all-or-nothing social media armchair generals and show voters that our uniquely American system of governance still works for them. Nearly two-thirds of Americans reject partisan extremes and want lawmakers to work together to solve problems. This is a chance to do just that.
Both parties can work together to get every Floridian online if we commit to real governance. That means having the spine to say no to the special interests and extreme voices pushing narrow agendas that can derail the greater good.
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Arthenia Joyner served as the Senate Democratic Leader and represented the Tampa Bay area in the Florida Senate and House of Representatives for nearly two decades.
