Hearings to examine Haiti 2026, focusing on security and foreign assistance priorities.
Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs
2026-02-10
Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
Good morning. The committee will come to order. Secretary Letnick, thank you for accepting our invitation to join us today to discuss the Department of Commerce's broadband deployment efforts, including the implementation of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program. Four years ago, Congress authorized the BEAD program providing the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the Department of Commerce with $42.5 billion to provide grants aimed at bridging the digital divide. The BEAD program is the largest, the largest ever single federal investment in broadband deployment and was intended to connect Americans lacking reliable broadband connectivity. If we fail after we put so many dollars into broadband availability, and we still have places in the country that don't have broadband, we have really failed. There should be sufficient resources for this goal to be accomplished. But four years later, not a single BEAD-funded project has been completed, much less initiated, and not a single unserved or underserved American has connected to broadband service through the BEAD program. Under the Biden administration, implementation was encumbered by complex and often unworkable regulatory and financial burdens and hurdles for states and for providers. Strigent labor and workforce provisions, climate and environmental objectives, effective rate regulation imposed by low-cost plan requirements, and convoluted permitting processes dissuaded many providers, especially those in rural areas, from participating. In June of 2025, NTIA issued a bead restructuring policy notice aimed at rolling back these burdensome requirements and expediting implementation of the bead program. That policy notice, NTIA, identified obstacles to deployment under existing bead guidance and outlined several changes with the goal of maximizing the benefit of the bargain that Americans should expect from the investment in broadband deployment under the bead program.
Secretary Lutnik, I commend your department's and NTIA's efforts to relieve undue burdens on state broadband offices and providers. However, I am concerned that certain changes to the BEAT program implemented under the revised guidance may jeopardize the efficiency and the effectiveness of the program. Following the June restructuring, state broadband offices worked diligently with NTIA and providers to modify proposals and realign their BEAD plans according to the guidance issued by NTIA. As part of that process, state broadband offices were urged by NTIA to revisit many projects and locations to find additional cost savings. The resulting final BEAD plans submitted by many states saw drastic reduction in BEAD fund requests. As an example, in my home state of Kansas, BEAD secured roughly $452 million in its bead allocation. After the benefits of the bargain reduction, Kansans final bead plan requests only $166.6 million of the original allocation, leaving over $200 million in unspent funds and little clarity from the Department of Commerce and NTIA on how those funds may be used. This uncertainty has caused concern among state broadband offices who are unable to plan broadband initiatives that rely on the balance of their bead allocations. Additionally, I'm concerned that the worthwhile goal of maximizing the impact of taxpayer dollars has prioritized achieving the lowest cost rather than the best value for BEAD projects. This approach risks repeating the errors of previous federal broadband deployment programs that failed to account for the unique connectivity needs in each of our states. I'd also like to discuss your outlook for the BEAD program and the future of federal broadband deployment efforts, including how unspent funds should be treated. We will also discuss broadband deployment provisions included in recently enacted appropriations legislation produced by this subcommittee and other subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.
Thank you for calling this hearing on an issue important to Americans in every state in the union, getting connected to high-speed Internet at an affordable price. I had hoped to spend the entire hearing focused on that subject, and I do intend to get to it. But since this hearing was scheduled, another matter has arisen from the Epstein files that goes to the heart of the credibility and honesty of our witness, Secretary Lutnick. Mr. Secretary, I hope during the course of your testimony we can get answers to some of those questions. As you know, Mr. Secretary, the issue is not that you engaged in any wrongdoing. in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, but that you totally misrepresented the extent of your relationship with him to the Congress, to the American people, and to the survivors of his despicable criminal and predatory acts. You told us that when you and your wife first encountered Jeffrey Epstein in his apartment in 2005, he used sexual innuendo to explain why he had a massage table in the middle of the room. You said it disgusted you. and that you hurried out and vowed never to set foot in the same room with him again, and you suggested that you never had anything more to do with him. I remember thinking that for all our disagreements, you had good instincts. But now that turns out not to be true. The information recently revealed from the Epstein files show that your statements were at best highly misleading. The files show that you had interactions with Epstein over the next 13 years, including long after he was convicted in 2008 of soliciting the prostitution of a minor. And Mr. Secretary, that does call into question your fitness for the job you now hold and the question of your credibility before this committee and the Congress. It also relates to the testimony here on the subject that the chairman
raised because at the confirmation hearing last year, your confirmation hearing, you seemed to fully appreciate the need to get construction underway on the broadband build out to get our constituents connected. And yet here we are, as the chairman said, a year later, and as far as I can understand it, not one person in this country has been connected through the program.
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