WASHINGTON-The Bush administration last week retreated from its proposal to overhaul the schools and libraries Internet discount program and may be forced to backtrack on proposed budget cuts to telecom programs administered by the departments of commerce and agriculture.
Education Secretary Roderick Paige, in testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, made the concession not to combine e-rate with other technology programs in the Department of Education. “Our current thinking is that the e-rate will not be consolidated into other technology programs. …We do not plan to collapse or mix the funds of the programs,” Paige was quoted as telling House panel members.
Following the hearing, congressional staffers confirmed that e-rate is not part of the education reform bill moving through Congress. Indeed, Senate Health and Education Committee Chairman James Jeffords (R-Vt.), a member of the Vermont delegation seeking legislation to fund mobile phone-cancer-research and to permit local officials to take health into account in considering tower siting, is not including e-rate in his education reform bill.
Given last week’s developments, it now appears e-rate-an expansion of universal service funded by wireless and wireline telecom carriers at a cost of $2.25 billion annually-will remain intact. However, even while conceding e-rate will not join other Department of Education technology programs, the Bush administration was unwilling to admit defeat.
“We are still considering how to proceed with e-rate,” said Lindsey Kozberg. “A conclusive decision has not been made.”
However, there is a sense that Bush-given the massive opposition to his e-rate proposal and lack of funding alternatives-has little choice but to leave it alone.
The wireless industry, which believes it receives little benefit from the money it contributes to e-rate and universal service, has steered clear of the politically-charged debate on Bush’s proposed e-rate reform.
The Federal Communications Commission wrote the rules for e-rate, which was written into the 1996 telecom act by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). The program, which gives poor and rural schools Internet discounts of up to 90 percent, is overseen by the Schools and Libraries Corp. The firm’s e-rate application and selection process has come under criticism in recent years.
E-rate supporters insist the problems are being fixed and that the program has stabilized after early growing pains.
During the presidential campaign and early in his new administration, President Bush vowed to roll e-rate into the Department of Education and convert it into a block-grant program for states. The proposal drew intense criticism from lawmakers, educators, civil-rights advocates and others.
Last week, the pressure on Bush to drop his e-rate plan built to a crescendo.
In a March 6 letter to Bush, 60 House lawmakers expressed strong support for keeping e-rate in its present form.
“Substituting the e-rate with the block-grant funding out of the Department of Education will reduce the amount of funding for technology in the classroom, without any efficiency gains in the program itself,” the lawmakers stated. “Additionally, schools currently eligible for e-rate may lose access. Providing our nation’s children with the tools they need to be successful is too important a task to risk with an unproven block-grant scheme.”
In prepared remarks at a House education technology hearing last Thursday, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) put the e-rate issue into a broader, economic context.
“If the high-tech sector invests today in our schoolchildren and teachers in a meaningful way, then we hasten the arrival of the day when we won’t need to extend H1-B visas to skilled foreign workers because we’ll have a home-grown work force ready for the jobs of the knowledge-based economy,” Markey stated.
At the same hearing, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), ranking minority member of the House Commerce Committee, took a swipe at new FCC Chairman Michael Powell on the related issue of the Digital Divide. Powell has de-emphasized the importance of the Digital Divide, the moniker given to the lack of information technology available to poor, minority and rural citizens in America today.
Dingell noted that Secretary of State Colin Powell, father of the FCC chairman, sought to bridge the Divide Divide as a founding member of organization PowerUp. “So it appears that at least the elder Bush would agree the Digital Divide is an important one,” stated Dingell.
Dingell also accused telecom carriers of overcharging consumers for e-rate. “Clearly, no company should be cutting a fat hog on the e-rate program. If excess money is being collected, it should be refunded to customers in a timely manner,” said Dingell.
Elsewhere, Bush proposals to cut funding for Commerce Department’s Technology Opportunity Program from $42.5 million to $15 million and to kill the Rural Telephone Bank-which makes low-interest loans to upgrade rural telecom infrastructure-also could be in trouble.
Already, House telecom subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has protested proposed TOP budget cuts by Bush.
Ken Johnson, spokesman for House Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), said the staff is reviewing the Bush budget and the Louisiana lawmaker will express his views on TOP funding soon.
John O’Neal, general counsel for the National Rural Telecom Association, called the Bush proposal to zero out the Rural Telephone Bank “fundamentally flawed.” O’Neal said RTB loans make possible distance learning, telemedicine, emergency 911 and other services in rural America.
John Lindgren, a spokesman for Senate communications subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), said the lawmaker has had discussions with the administration on Bush’s proposal to privatize the RTB and hopes a solution “can be worked out to benefit everyone.” Burns is a strong advocate of rural telecom.
According to one source, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman tried but failed to save the RTB from losing all its funding in the Bush budget.
Last July, the Agriculture Department’s rural telecom program-of which RTB is a part-was expanded to enable wireless carriers to apply for low-interest loans in order to bring new technology to unserved areas.
