United States Merkley Tender

Oregons Senator Jeff Merkley pushed U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue to make sure that new rural broadband funding reaches the communities it was intended to help.As the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture and Rural Development Appropriations Subcommittee Merkley successfully fought to secure a massive 1.15 billion investment in rural broadband deployment through the 2018 and 2019 congressional spending bills. In December 2018 USDA announced the rule implementing the program that would get these funds to communities.Many Oregonians have expressed concerns that some of ReConnects designs limit accessibility for more residential areas with fewer medical centers businesses and educational facilities wrote Merkley in a letter to Perdue. Additionally an applicant who normally qualifies for the loan program under current Rural Utilities Service guidelines would be unable to accept due to strict standards. These guidelines make the program out of reach for many Americans in rural underserved and unserved areas for which this program is intended to help.A summary of which stakeholders engaged in the comment process on USDAs deployment including the total number of individuals businesses schools etc. and how USDA has incorporated these comments to improve the ReConnect ProgramEfforts made by USDA to ensure underserved and unserved rural communities with limited resources are able to meaningfully engage in and apply for this program especially those with populations of 10000 or lessHow USDA is considering underserved but predominately residential areas that do not include many educational medical agricultural or business sites which under the programs competitive scoring do not perform well in the programs applicationAn explanation of the requirement that no more than 10 of the proposed service areas can already have existing broadband speeds of 101 Mbps or greater when previous programs allowed for much higher thresholdsAn explanation of how the Rural Utilities Service will or has worked to develop affordable loan products given its strict standards including the requirement for an applicant to pledge all of its assets as collateralAn estimate USDA could provide on any potential delays to the disbursal of grants and loans that are a result of the partial shutdown of the federal government andA record of attempts made by USDA to work with the Office of Management and Budget OMB to finalize subsidy rates for the loan program.The need for greater broadband accessibility is for both promoting economic growth and for expanding access to important services like health care and education wrote Merkley. Access to high-speed internet especially for rural communities is crucial in connecting our constituents to the wealth of information and resources that remains critically underutilized in these areas.