BEAD Program And Bureaucratic Failure By Design – OpEd

April 23, 2025April 23, 2025 Craig Eyermann 0 Comments

How can the U.S. government spend billions to bring high speed internet service to digitally deprived Americans and have almost nothing to show for it?

On May 13, 2022, the Biden-Harris administration rolled out its plans to close what it called the “digital divide” in America. The federal government would spend billions to deliver affordable high-speed internet service to underserved communities. The administration’s “Internet for All” initiative would, in their own words, “meaningfully address fundamental economic, educational, social and health-related inequities in our country”.

The biggest part of that effort was the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Under this program, bureaucrats at the Department of Commerce would disperse $42.5 billion in grants to every corner of the United States. With so much money made available to them, surely they would realize their goal of providing high-speed internet connections to all those underserved Americans who lacked them.

Three Years Later and No High-Speed Internet Connections

Almost three years later, there’s no evidence of any American anywhere having connected to the Internet from anything the Commerce Department funded with its BEAD program grants.

Comedian Jon Stewart learned that shocking truth and the reason for it on his Weekly Show podcast. Even though they had $42.5 billion at their disposal, they appear to have had even more bureaucratic red tape at their disposal, which doomed the program. Stewart’s interview with the New York Times‘ Ezra Klein lays out the fourteen bureaucratic hoops that were thrown in the way of progress:

Here’s an excerpt of the craziness of the steps the state and local government applicants had to go through after they made it through the first seven steps, which omits some of Stewart’s more coarse reactions.

Transcript of Bureaucratic Craziness

“Having submitted their five-year plans and letters of intent, step eight is states must submit an ‘initial proposal’ to the NTIA [National Telecommunications and Information Administration],” Klein explained.

“Is that a result of their $5 million planning fund?” Stewart asked, noticeably losing hope.

“I assume, but then what was the five-year plan?” said Klein. “Like, if the five-year action plan isn’t the initial proposal, then what’s the five-year action plan?”

“Step nine, NTIA must review and approve each state’s—again—’initial proposal.’ By my read, we have had at least two initial proposals here, but that’s a different issue,” he continued.

“Step 10, states must publish their own map and allow internal challenges to their own maps. So the government has published a map. They have invited the states to challenge the map. Then states have submitted initial proposals and they then have to publish their own map and allow challenges.”

“Wait, who’s challenging it within the state?”

“Well, you know, organized interest groups, environmental groups,” Klein said. “Literally anybody. I want to say something because it’s very important. This is the Biden administration’s process for its own bill. They wanted this to happen. This is how liberal government works now.”

“This is something they instituted for their bill?”

“For their bill. This is a bill passed by Democrats with a regulatory structure written by a Democratic administration,” he said. “Step 11, the NTIA must review and improve the challenge results and the final map.”

“So, the NTIA has put forward a map. The states have challenged that map. Then the states have put forward their maps, had other challenges, and now the NTIA must review and approve the challenges to the state maps… We’ve lost nine of the applicants at that point.”

“Step 12, states must run a competitive sub-granting process—yeah, none of that could have happened along the way here. We have now lost 17 more applicants. So now 30 of 56 have completed step 12.”

“Step 13, states must submit a final proposal. All the proposals weren’t enough for NTIA. Now that goes to three of 56. So, we’ve gone in the last couple of steps from 56 had gone to this point to three or 56,” he continued.

“Step 14, the NTIA must review and approve the state’s final proposal. And that is three of the 56 jurisdictions and states are there.”

Say what you will about the politicians and bureaucrats behind the Biden-Harris administration’s costly “Internet for All” debacle. They built the exact program they wanted. Its failure was not left to chance. It was built in by design.