Gov performance

On June 29, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report on the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program’s application process. The GAO investigated multiple Lifeline providers and failed to confirm the eligibility of roughly a third of participants.

A Summary of the Report can be found here: Additional Action Needed to Address Significant Risks in FCC’s Lifeline Program

Lifeline Advocates Urge FCC Chairman Pai to Stand by his First Statements as Chairman and Safeguard the only Federal Program Targeting the Digital Divide

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: "“Last year, I led an investigation into the Lifeline program that revealed serious weaknesses in federal safeguards. Today’s GAO report confirms what we discovered then: Waste, fraud, and abuse are all too prevalent in the program. Commission staff and the Office of Inspector General have already been developing recommendations to better safeguard taxpayer funds. I stand ready to work with my colleagues to crack down on the unscrupulous providers that abuse the program so that the dollars we spend support affordable, high-speed broadband Internet access for our nation’s poorest families.”

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: “We have a statutory obligation as a Commission to ensure all Americans, including low income consumers and those living in rural and insular areas, have affordable voice and broadband access. Recognition of this responsibility goes hand-in-hand with my long stated belief that we must aggressively root out waste, fraud, and abuse in all of our universal service programs, including Lifeline. In recent years, the Commission has taken numerous steps to achieve this goal, including setting up a national eligibility verifier, adopting a periodic recertification requirement and ensuring that people who are signed up are actually using their service. The Lifeline program already has a very low improper payment rate of 0.45%, and it must be noted, that many of the issues highlighted by the GAO’s report will be addressed by the national eligibility verifier. I am pleased that the work on this effort is proceeding as planned, and will work with my colleagues to address all of the GAO’s recommendations. Today the FCC’s Lifeline program remains the only means-tested universal service program, where only the consumers who cannot afford to be connected are given the ability to do so. So while we invest in the infrastructure needed to bring connectivity into every community in America, we must not forget that ‘if we build it, they will come’ only holds true if the services are affordable. Some may use the limited findings of this report as justification to cut back on the Lifeline program even further, but that would be catastrophic for those most in need. The answer is not denying access to those who cannot afford connectivity and access to critical services like 911, the next steps should include rolling up our sleeves and addressing any imperfections that remain. We have a choice to make: be short-sighted and weaken a program designed to assist our nation’s most vulnerable or fix what may be broken so that this agency is actually upholding its Congressional mandate to ‘make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States…a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges…for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property….’ Instead of widening the digital divide, let us have an honest conversation about how to make voice and broadband even more affordable and accessible for economically challenged Americans.”

FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly:“I am not surprised by the revelations in GAO’s latest examination of the Lifeline program. It’s why I sought to address fraud, waste and abuse prior to expanding the scope of the program and pushed unsuccessfully for a host of needed reforms, including the adoption of a budget for the program. I have little confidence, at this point, in the changes adopted by the Commission over the last number of years, or in the ability of USAC to stem the tide of problems. More significant reform is needed, including completely rethinking USAC."

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report finding that deceased individuals had enrolled in the program and noting that GAO could not confirm the eligibility of 36 percent of the subscribers it reviewed. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai issued the following statement in response: “Last year, I led an investigation into the Lifeline program that revealed serious weaknesses in federal safeguards. Today’s GAO report confirms what we discovered then: Waste, fraud, and abuse are all too prevalent in the program. Commission staff and the Office of Inspector General have already been developing recommendations to better safeguard taxpayer funds. I stand ready to work with my colleagues to crack down on the unscrupulous providers that abuse the program so that the dollars we spend support affordable, high-speed broadband Internet access for our nation’s poorest families"

Suffolk University released detailed numbers from a poll it conducted with USA Today, exploring, among other things, how views of political issues overlap with public confidence in various media outlets. In this poll, 60 percent of Republicans identified Fox News as the outlet in which they had the most confidence. Every other network combined for 23 percent. By contrast, only 4 percent of Democrats cited Fox as their most trusted. (Most trusted among Democrats was CNN, at 20 percent.) On issue after issue, those who most trusted Fox News held positions that were much more favorable to the president and his party than survey respondents overall. For example, consider President Trump’s job approval. More than half of the population overall disapproves of Trump’s performance. Among those who trust Fox , 9 in 10 approved. Nearly three-quarters of that group think America is headed in the right direction; overall, half think we’re on the wrong track.

The Federal Communications Commission has not evaluated the Lifeline program’s performance in meeting its goals of increasing telephone and broadband subscribership among low-income households, but has recently taken steps to do so. Lifeline participation rates are low compared to the percentage of low-income households that pay for telephone service, and broadband adoption rates have increased for the low-income population even without a Lifeline subsidy. Without an evaluation, which GAO recommended in March 2015, FCC is limited in its ability to demonstrate whether Lifeline is efficiently and effectively meeting its program goals. In a July 2016 Order, FCC announced plans for an independent third party to evaluate Lifeline design, function, and administration by December 2020. FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC)—the not-for-profit organization that administers Lifeline—have taken some steps to enhance controls over finances and subscriber enrollment. Nevertheless, GAO found weaknesses in several areas. GAO makes seven recommendations, which FCC generally agreed with:
require Commissioners to review and approve, as appropriate, spending above the budget in a timely manner;
maintain and disseminate an updated list of state eligibility databases available to Lifeline providers that includes the qualifying programs those databases access to confirm eligibility; this step would help ensure Lifeline providers are aware of state eligibility databases and could also help ensure USAC audits of Lifeline providers can verify that available state databases are being utilized to verify subscriber eligibility;
establish time frames to evaluate compliance plans and develop instructions with criteria for FCC reviewers how to evaluate these plans to meet Lifeline’s program goals;
develop an enforcement strategy that details what violations lead to penalties and apply this as consistently as possible to all Lifeline providers to ensure consistent enforcement of program violations; the strategy should include a rationale and method for resource prioritization to help maximize the effectiveness of enforcement activities;
ensure that the preliminary plans to transfer the USF funds from the private bank to the U.S. Treasury are finalized and implemented as expeditiously as possible;
require a review of customer bills as part of the contribution audit to include an assessment of whether the charges, including USF fees, meet FCC Truth-in-Billing rules with regard to labeling, so customer bills are transparent, and appropriately labeled and described, to help consumers detect and prevent unauthorized charges; and
respond to USAC requests for guidance and address pending requests concerning USF contribution requirements to ensure the contribution factor is based on complete information and that USF pass-through charges are equitable.

[Commentary] Sometimes the noise drowns out the good news. And it certainly is right now. It would be hard to fault the average American for thinking all that’s going on in Washington these days is high-drama hearings and partisan sniping. But amid the countdown clocks and cable news chatter, something important is happening: Congress is getting things done to help improve people’s lives.

Here in the House of Representatives, we can do more than one thing at a time. And the truth is, even while carrying out our oversight responsibilities, we’ve been delivering on our promises to the American people. We are passing important legislation. We are doing our job. You just may not have heard about it.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission, once a sleepy regulatory backwater, has become a deeply political agency, governed less by the science of radio waves than by pressure from inside-the-Beltway groups. How did we get here? The answer, according to “The Political Spectrum”, a remarkable new book by Clemson University economist Thomas Hazlett, is that the agency began life with a political agenda, one that continues to override its technical experts.

With the skill of a TV detective, Hazlett reveals how the undefined “public interest” standard has proven itself a potent and malleable political weapon. As new information technologies are invented — from radio and TV to cable, satellite, cellular and now broadband — the FCC has wielded its power both intentionally and recklessly to benefit a changing cast of favored industries, restricting competition and all but the most mainstream content.

[Larry Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]

[Commentary] In order for us to expand prosperity and extend economic opportunity to more Americans, we must remain on the cutting edge. This means that government at all levels must focus on removing barriers to innovation and ensuring that technological advances aren’t strangled by bureaucratic red tape.

For starters, we’re taking aggressive action to speed the roll-out of next-generation wireless networks. But to get to the 5G future that will make the Internet of Things fully possible, we’ll need much more infrastructure than what today’s networks demand. If America is to lead the world in 5G, we need to modernize our regulations so that infrastructure can be deployed promptly and at scale. Another Federal Communications Commission priority has been making the agency more agile and responsive.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the commission can do more with less—102 fewer full-time employees, for example—and his budget reflected that philosophy while still being able to serve the FCC's core mission of protecting the public interest and closing the digital divide. Chairman Pai, joined by Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O'Rielly, testified on the FCC's budget before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.

The FCC has asked for about $322 million, 5.2% less than the previous year, even though the FCC's budget has been flat since 2009. Chairman Pai conceded it was a challenge to do more with less but that the FCC had rolled up its sleeves. And while he said past chairmen had pointed out that the FCC is fully funded by fees charged to licensees, he also remembered—and more than one legislator reminded him—that someone was paying that fee, including businesses big and small and the consumers to whom those fees were passed along. Chairman Pai said that even with fewer people, the FCC had more than doubled the number of items it was dealing with at its public meetings—saying the average was not 5.83 items vs. 2.58 under his predecessor. He cited a number of cost savings as well, from closing an off-site warehouse to cutting down on the number of printers and copying machines.

President Donald Trump called for “sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology” during the first meeting of the American Technology Council.

Eighteen of America’s leading technology executives – including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet – convened at the White House for the summit. “Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution,” said President Trump. “America should be the global leader in government technology just as we are in every other aspect, and we are going to start our big edge again in technology – such an important industry.” The tech leaders spent four hours meeting officials including Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross before meeting with the president. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, was also present.

They discussed modernizing the government’s technological infrastructure, cutting fraud and government costs and improving services for taxpayers. The White House believes these measures could save up to $1 trillion over 10 years.

President Donald Trump fired off tweets June 16 attacking the special counsel's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and apparently, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt,” the president said on Twitter. The somewhat vague tweet seems to refer to Rosenstein, who wrote a memo outlining an argument against then-FBI director James B. Comey. The White House initially claimed that Rosenstein's memo contributed to Trump's decision to fire Comey. But later, President Trump said in an interview that he would have fired Comey “regardless” of Rosenstein's recommendation.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the special investigation is currently being led by another former FBI director. Robert Mueller reports to Rosenstein, but is authorized to pursue the investigation independently. And there is no evidence that Mueller recommended to President Trump that he fire Comey. President Trump also seemed to confirm reports in The Washington Post and other publications that Mueller's investigation has expanded to include allegations that he attempted to obstruct the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the election and his campaign associates' possible collusion with Russians.