The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“RURAL BROADBAND” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S6951-S6952 on May 25, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RURAL BROADBAND
Mr. ROBERTS. Madam President, I rise today to speak about rural America, and the need to ensure that this cornerstone of our way of life has the same access and availability to modern technology that many Americans take for granted. Specifically, I am referring to the availability of high-speed Internet, also known as broadband.
Broadband Internet is essential to rural development. It does for rural areas today what interstate highways did in the 20th century, and railroads did in the 19 century. It is key to attracting new businesses to rural areas, and helping our existing rural businesses grow and become more competitive.
Unfortunately, rural America continues to lag behind its urban and suburban counterparts when it comes to the availability of this essential resource. It is not that rural folks do not want broadband, but only that they do not have as much access.
In the 2002 farm bill, Congress created a loan and loan guarantee program to help build broadband out to rural areas that lacked this crucial service.
The Rural Utilities Service, RUS, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was charged with the responsibility of administering the broadband loan program and using it to promote access in unserved, rural areas.
Unfortunately, the agency's implementation and administration of this program strayed from the rural focus Congress intended.
Instead of targeting our rural areas, huge sums of money have been used to provide broadband in urban areas, suburban developments, and towns that already have service.
Instances of waste and abuse have been clearly illustrated by the USDA inspector general, in hearings held by both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, and in prominent news reports.
There is wide, bipartisan agreement on what is wrong with this program. I believe that there should also be wide, bipartisan agreement on how to move forward.
While a number of legislative and regulatory fixes have been suggested here in Congress and by the RUS, none so far have been comprehensive enough to surmount the challenges of deploying broadband in rural America.
I have been proud to reach out to my friend and colleague, Senator Salazar of Colorado, on the Senate Agriculture Committee to work toward a solution. It is the Committee on Agriculture that has jurisdiction over this program, and it is from this committee that a way forward must be found.
Together, myself and the distinguished junior Senator from Colorado, have worked toward a consensus driven, comprehensive approach to promoting broadband in rural America. On Monday of this week, we introduced legislation to accomplish this goal, the Rural Broadband Improvement Act of 2007.
This legislation will provide the secretary with additional guidance to direct broadband loans to those truly in need by clarifying where, when, and to whom loans can be made. It ties approval of loans to a requirement of nonduplication of service, making this legislation significantly more robust and less ambiguous than the current statute.
The issue of duplication of service, more than any other issue, has been the subject of criticism of the RUS. When RUS makes loans in areas that already have broadband service, it has a twofold negative affect.
First, it undermines the market. Often, rural towns may enjoy broadband availability. Small, independent providers that are already present in rural towns have their subscribers pulled out from under them by a competitor who, because they have an RUS loan, have an unfair advantage with which to offer lower rates. This can threaten the very existence of some locally owned, independent broadband providers that invested in rural towns without an RUS loan.
Second, when loans are going to areas that already have service, it means that truly unserved, rural areas for which this program was created continue to be neglected. Indeed, it is the outlying, sparsely populated areas that are in need of broadband service. These are the areas broadband loans should be made to serve--not overbuilding towns where the service is already present.
This is unacceptable. That is why this legislation which I am introducing on behalf of myself and my colleague from Colorado will attach to the definition of eligible rural community, a clearly defined requirement of nonduplication of broadband service.
Reforming and improving the broadband loan program means doing more than just addressing this one aspect for which it has been criticized. It also means eliminating unnecessary and unprecedented limitations on what borrowers are eligible to participate.
In particular, I am referring to the conspicuous 2 percent telephone subscriber line limit. This limitation acts as a disincentive for growth; unnecessarily penalizes larger, but still rural-focused phone companies; and ignores the reality that more and more households are abandoning land line subscriptions in favor of wireless communication. The bottom line is that limiting what providers can participate in the program does nothing to expedite broadband deployment in rural areas.
This legislation also streamlines the application and post-
application requirements. For many small and independent providers with limited staff, it can be discouraging to look at a 38-page application guide to a 57-page application. What's more, those who go through this arduous process may wait for a seemingly indefinite period of time for a yes or no to whether their application is approved.
To address these matters, the act directs the Secretary to complete application processing within 180 days and allows parent companies and their wholly owned subsidiaries to file a single, consolidated application and post application audit report.
The bill further streamlines the application process by eliminating various other duplicative and burdensome application requirements, and directs the agency to hire whatever additional administrative, legal, and field staff are necessary to meet these requirements.
The act also contains powerful incentives to increase the feasibility of loans. First, it allows limited access to towns where broadband may be available, but in circumstances when doing so is necessary to building broadband out to the sparsely populated and outlying areas that have no service at all. I do want to stress, however, that this is not a loop-hole that will lead back to the problems of duplication and overbuild. The majority of households to be served by the project financed with an RUS loan must be without access to broadband. Additionally, the act creates better transparency and requires incumbent providers to be properly notified when an RUS applicant plans on doing so.
Second, the act ensures that collateral requirements are commensurate to the risk of the loan.
Third, instead of requiring an inflexible 20 percent equity requirement, the act provides more flexibility for small and start up companies by requiring only 10 percent equity, and allowing the agency to waive this requirement so long as the applicant can prove that it will be able to pay back the principal of the loan plus interest.
This legislation also codifies an innovative grant program based on the successes illustrated in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Broadband deployment in rural areas will work better once we know where it already is. To do this, grants will be made available to help fund partnerships between state governments and the private sector to map where broadband is available in rural areas, and conduct outreach to areas where it is still unavailable.
I and my colleague, Senator Salazar, have always shared a concern for our rural citizens. I am proud to work with my neighbor to the west on this issue, and I look forward to working with my other colleagues on the Senate Agriculture Committee as we begin work on the 2007 farm bill.
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