Report: Broadband stimulus flows disproportionately to Commerce Committee members

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: The Hill

Over 40 percent of stimulus funds that the Commerce Department doled out for broadband went to or was shared by districts represented by House Energy and Commerce Committee members, according to an analysis by Communications Daily. The committee oversees telecom issues.

That's despite the fact that these members only make up 14 percent of the House, the analysis said. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) records show that committee members' districts took in all or part of nearly $1.9 billion in grants, the report said.

The committee members whose districts were awarded the the most funding were Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) with $128 million, Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) with $128 million, George Radanovich (R-Calif.) with $128 million, Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) with $123 million and John Sarbanes (D-Md.) with $115 million, according to the report, which drew from grant descriptions posted on the NTIA website.

"While I'd love to take credit for steering $128 million to my district, the fact of the matter is that this money won't primarily benefit my constituents, and I wasn't alone in supporting these applications," Doyle told Communications Daily.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/126235-broadband-stimulus-flows-disproportionately-to-commerce-committee-members

[ixion]

1. which is why I refer to it as a robbery

because that's what it appears to be.

[ProSense]

2. Interesting.

Pitts did not support the stimulus bill and wrote just one letter in support of a project, the report cites a spokesman as saying.

<...>

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member of the committee, noted that many members voiced concern about stimulus spending from the get-go.

"Many of us said when the stimulus package was being drafted that there was no justification for simply lining favored constituencies' pockets with taxpayers' money," he said. "And if there was going to be spending no matter what we said, logic screamed that it should have gone first to unserved areas where people can't get broadband at any price."

The report qualified Barton's district as "left on the sidelines" as far as taking in broadband stimulus.

The report also said over 60 percent of the money went to states won by President Obama. It adds that those states contain nearly 69 percent of the population.

I'm trying to find the story here. Stimulus funds have to be applied for, and for specific projects. What are the chances Republicans are going to be applying for stimulus funding for broadband projects?

That last point is a very odd statistic.

[matt819]

3. Is it any wonder we're ranked so low in broadband access

Broadband access in this country is a joke. If you're at a university or in a metropolitan area, you have options, some pretty low cost. Outside the major metropolitan areas, forget about it. Rural. Yeah, right. I pay $200 a month for 3G service for my home office. I saw an ad recently for comparable service in Boston for maybe $15. And Verizon offers services more than 20x faster, at 1/4 the price, but not for me. My neighbor refuses to pay those rates, and they still have one phone line and dial-up.

Yeah, yeah, some of you are going to come up with options. None applies here:

Satellite - $129/month, but throttle back applies.
Wireless via radio signal - had it for $79/month, but they couldn't deal with interference issues, and the number of subscribers on that signal did make it cost effective to fix the problem.
Cable - Town has a contract with a cable company, but they are not required to provide ubiquitous service. For only $18,000, the cable company would string the cable the last mile. No thanks.
DSL - Just a shade too far.
Verizon mobile broadband - $55/month, which I have for backup if the cell goes down, but it tops out at 5GB/month before packing on additional charges.

[DCKit]

4. Pretty much the same situation here.

Went looking today for an alternative to our relatively inexpensive, entirely craptastic Verizon DSL (my connection has been dropped more times than I can count today), only to find the alternatives cost, at the very least, twice as much.

[LiberalArkie]

5. I had the same problem

I was on Hughes for $70 a month and it was good for HTTP, but sucked at everything else HTTPS really bad.

We were told that we would never get DSL. But my brother in law went door to door and got 45 signatures with phone numbers of those that wanted it and sent it to the telephones guys in town.
Most of the outside telephone guys get points for turning on new customers and features (and get to keep their jobs).


A month later we had 3MB DSL for $24.00 and it may be going to 12MB in spring of next year..

[jsamuel]

6. kind of a stupid story

unless they have something that says that the districts were improperly awarded the grants, all this says is that the districts that these congressmen/women represented applied and won more of the grants. Maybe their districts were the ones that had the most need for the grants. This story had minimal research done. There is no evidence of anything wrong in the information provided.