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Sponsored by Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN) · 1 active : 1 Democrat
Latest action: Received in the Senate. Read twice. Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 61.
Rural Broadband Protection Act of 2025
This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to establish a process to vet applicants for certain funding programs that support affordable broadband deployment in high-cost areas, including rural communities.
Specifically, the FCC must conduct a rulemaking to develop a vetting process for applicants seeking funding under high-cost universal service programs for the deployment of a broadband-capable network and the provision of supported services over the network. The FCC must require applications for such funding to document each applicant’s technical, financial, and operational capabilities related to the proposed deployment, as well as a reasonable business plan.
The FCC must evaluate applications against reasonable and well-established standards and must consider each applicant’s history of compliance with the requirements of other government broadband funding programs. After the rulemaking is finalized, funds may only be awarded to applicants that satisfy the standards established therein.
Finally, the FCC must set financial penalties for applicants that default in some manner during the evaluation process before they are authorized to begin receiving support.
Members fall into . 6 representatives don’t have enough data yet and are marked “insufficient data”. Non-voting delegates are not counted. The bill is not before the House right now; these scores show where members would stand.
Bars show each input from 0 to 100: ideology gap, scorecard gap, , and the . is the seat’s partisan lean, and shows how much of the input data a score has.
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These members have less than half of the model’s inputs, so their scores are not banded or ranked.
Ideology is each member’s score. The cluster low on the chart includes the bill’s 2 sponsor and cosponsors in the House: they have already committed, so they score as entrenched. 6 representatives without a DW-NOMINATE score or with insufficient data are not plotted.
Similar votes count toward swing-v3 in the House: total similarity weight 5.5 (needs 5.0).
