Page 856

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.

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.”° 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.

Anew 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.

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.”” Congress subsequently established the FCC through the Communications Act of 1934. Congress has passed a number of additional statutes—some broad, some