Thanks to President Biden, America is on Track to Achieve Universal Broadband Access by 2030

     This is a truly landmark achievement, one that is not talked about enough. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the largest and most comprehensive investment in America's infrastructure ever, the most noteworthy infrastructure law since the Eisenhower administration, and one that makes major investments in clean water, clean energy, roads and bridges, and other critical aspects of infrastructure.

     One of my personal favorite parts of the bill is the investments it provides in broadband. Universal broadband access became a major issue about 15 years ago, and Democrats, in particular, have succeeded in making investments at the state level, including current governors like Gavin Newsom of California, Ned Lamont of Connecticut, Tony Evers of Wisconsin, and Laura Kelly of Kansas. Lack of broadband has resulted in many rural communities being left behind in the 21st century. Under President Biden, that has finally changed.

     In October 2020, the FCC estimated that it would take between $80 billion and $100 billion to expand broadband to at least 95 percent of Americans, the threshold that is considered "universal broadband." (There will always be some people without broadband, as many older folks, including my grandparents, simply choose to use a library for the internet or not use it at all.) The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided $65 billion.

     That would have made a tremendous difference, but that wasn't all the funding President Biden secured to expand broadband access. The American Rescue Plan Act may have passed without a single Republican vote, but it provided hundreds of billions of dollars to state and local governments to use as they see fit. $25 billion of that funding has been used to expand broadband, bringing the total amount of funding for broadband expansion President Biden secured in 2021 to $90 billion, all of which will be put to work over the next four or five years.

     Thanks to President Biden, America is on track to achieve universal broadband access by 2030, and he is working to expand it in Israel, Palestine, and other nations across the world, as well. On the point of foreign policy, there is a second broadband achievement worth noting: President Biden promised to ensure the global 5G rollout was led by secure, private sector companies and not state-owned entities like Huawei in China. That promise was kept in December 2021. President Biden made two promises to fundamentally change internet access, and he has kept them both.

     This investment is huge. America was the global leader in the 20th century because it invested heavily in science and infrastructure, something that has been all but ignored over the past 50 years. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, at a cost of $1.2 trillion, will generate trillions of dollars in economic activity, with the broadband portion alone expected to make up for the cost of the bill in economic activity. The bipartisan Chips and Science Act President Biden will soon sign into law will do for science what IIJA did for infrastructure. These actions, combined with the executive action President Biden has taken on Made-In-America as well as the foreign policy actions he is taking, are setting America on the right track to lead again in the 21st century.