Vance Seeks FAA Package Amendment to Allocate ACP Stopgap Money

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a lead GOP co-sponsor of the Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act (HR-6929/S-3565), confirmed Wednesday he will push hard for an amendment to the bipartisan 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act that would appropriate $7 billion in stopgap funding to keep the ailing FCC broadband program running through the end of the fiscal year. The Senate voted 89-10 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the FAA bill as a substitute for Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act (HR-3935).

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., separately filed his Promoting Affordable Connectivity Act (S-4208), which his office said “sustainably funds ACP by removing it from the annual appropriations process and integrating it into the Universal Service Fund distribution.” ACP funding and a congressional USF working group's plans for revamping that program are likely to dominate a Thursday Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on broadband affordability (see 2404290069), lobbyists told us.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel repeated her call for stopgap ACP funding Wednesday in letters to the leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees and lead congressional appropriators. “Additional funding from Congress is the only near-term solution for keeping the ACP going,” she wrote. “If additional funding is not promptly appropriated, the one in six households nationwide that rely on this program will face rising bills and increasing disconnection.” Rosenworcel noted the commission estimates that remaining ACP funds will be enough to pay only $14 of the usual $30 subsidy per participating household in May (see 2404100082). The White House also raised the issue Wednesday.

Vance said he and S-3565 lead sponsor Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., are “going to work pretty hard” to get ACP funding into the FAA package. They plan to block a time agreement to expedite the measure’s floor consideration absent a vote on the amendment. The FAA's remit expires May 10. “I’m obviously a very strong supporter” of keeping ACP running “and I think there’s a very good chance that we’ll be able to,” Vance told reporters. “I don’t think of this in any sort of grand ideological way. I just think that it’s good for … people all across the country.”

An amendment to the FAA bill appears to be “the most plausible pathway at this point, especially given” the Senate Commerce Committee didn’t mark up the draft Spectrum and National Security Act, Vance told reporters. The spectrum bill from Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., proposes lending the FCC $7 billion for ACP in FY24 and having the commission pay it back using future auction revenue (see 2404250061). The chances of a potential bid to attach that measure to the FAA package appeared uncertain (see 2405010051).

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., filed two ACP-related amendments to the Spectrum and National Security Act. One amendment would strike the $7 billion loan but leave intact $3.08 billion to fully fund the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program. Wicker’s other amendment would attach a proposed ACP Improvement and Extension Act to Cantwell’s bill. The proposal would allocate ACP $5 billion in stopgap funding for FY 2024 in combination with changes to program eligibility and the FCC convening a working group “for the purpose of creating a budget-neutral, long-term funding source” for the initiative. Several other Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Ted Budd (N.C.) and Eric Schmitt (Mo.), sought amendments to bar sex offenders and others from getting ACP subsidies.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., meanwhile, filed an amendment to the FAA package seeking to attach his Supporting National Security with Spectrum Act (S-4049), which would allocate an additional $3.08 billion for the rip-and-replace program. S-4049, which Daines filed in March (see 2403220056), would offset the additional rip-and-replace funding by authorizing a reauction of the 197 AWS-3 licenses that Dish and affiliated designated entities returned to the commission last year. Daines unsuccessfully sought last month to attach S-4049 to the FY24 national security appropriations supplemental package (HR-815). S-4049 co-sponsor Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., sought to attach the bill's language to the Spectrum and National Security Act.

USF Proposal Confirmed

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., and the leaders of the House Communications Subcommittee separately confirmed reports that the USF working group was drafting a proposal that would fuse the existing Lifeline program with ACP (see 2404170066). The proposal would eliminate ACP’s $100 device stipend and change the threshold for program eligibility to households that have a combined income at 135% of the federal poverty line, lobbyists said. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set the threshold at 200%. The draft also leans toward revamping USF’s contribution apparatus to include more tech sector entities, lobbyists said.

“We’re looking at some reforms to tighten up” ACP in conjunction with a USF revamp, Thune told us. “The program has been administered loosely. There’s not transparency and accountability there.” The group also is “looking at some reforms both on the contributions side” and administration of major USF initiatives, he said.

“We really want to make sure” that the 100-plus “federal broadband programs” aren’t overlapping, said House Communications Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio. He lacks an updated timeline for releasing the proposal, as lawmakers are still circulating it to stakeholders “so they can put their input in” on “how it’s going to affect them.”

“The difficulty” in finalizing the USF working group’s proposal has been solidifying changes to the program’s contribution factor, said House Communications ranking member Doris Matsui, D-Calif. “We can go around and around” on all the other issues a USF revamp must address, but “it always goes back to who’s going to pay.”

“The potential for a lapse” of ACP “is extremely high” given Senate Commerce's delay in advancing the Spectrum and National Security Act and diminishing chances a yet-to-be-opened discharge petition to force a House floor vote on HR-6929 (H Res. 1119) gets sufficient Republican support to succeed, said Greg Guice, chief policy officer for pro-affordable connectivity consultancy Vernonburg Group. He pointed to continued interest in attaching stopgap ACP money to a potential emergency appropriations package with federal funding to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge near Baltimore because lawmakers will “be looking for things that are bipartisan” to include.