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Ajit Pai works to cap funding for rural and poor people, gets GOP backing

The Federal Communications Commission has preliminarily voted to cap spending on the FCC's Universal Service programs, which deploy broadband to poor people and to rural and other underserved areas.

[...] Pai's plan, as we previously reported, would set a combined cap of $11.4 billion on the four programs that make up the Universal Service Fund (USF).

Pai's proposal says that capping the fund at this level "will strike the appropriate balance between ensuring adequate funding for the Universal Service programs while minimizing the financial burden on ratepayers and providing predictability for program participants." All four Universal Service programs are paid for by Americans through fees on their phone bills.

The proposed cap of $11.4 billion is the same as the sum of the four programs' budgets for 2018 and would be indexed to keep pace with inflation under Pai's proposal. The new cap wouldn't have an immediate impact on actual spending, because it's higher than current spending. The FCC projects that the USF's total disbursements will be $10.2 billion in 2019 and remain below $10.5 billion annually through 2023.

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