Saturday, May 7, 2022

Broadband bipartisanship: How did it happen and will it continue? - Blair Levin, Brookings Institution

Conventional wisdom holds that last year’s bipartisan passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) reflects the tradition of both parties wanting to deliver better roads and bridges—with nothing new to tell us about making progress elsewhere in our polarized, partisan environment. If anything, infrastructure is the exception that (barely) proves the rule of the current difficulty in finding common ground to meet new challenges. Perhaps this conventional wisdom is accurate. But one section of that legislation defied both the anchors of history and the dominant political dynamics of the moment: the $65 billion allocated to broadband.

https://www.brookings.edu/2022/04/18/broadband-bipartisanship-how-did-it-happen-and-will-it-continue/