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Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Lawmakers want to use the farm bill to make the Agriculture Department's ReConnect loan and grant program for rural broadband permanent, but they still need to settle a debate about whether to ease the required service speeds.
USDA is distributing almost $714 million for broadband connectivity projects through the fourth round of the ReConnect Program, an announcement that will direct loan and grant funding to 33 projects across the country.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has released all 12 spending bills for fiscal 2023 without waiting for the panel’s normal bipartisan process of debating the measures separately.
The Senate's proposed fiscal 2022 funding bill for the Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration would provide $7 billion in disaster assistance to cover producers' losses in 2020 and 2021.
House appropriators are proposing to steer new Agriculture Department funding into tackling climate change and expanding rural broadband service under a fiscal 2022 spending bill released Thursday.
President Joe Biden released a fiscal 2022 budget outline Friday that includes a $3.8 billion increase for the Agriculture Department that is heavily directed toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and making farms and forests more resilient to climate change.
Advocates say the Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program is working when it comes to building out high-speed internet technology into rural America but say higher speeds and more government funding is needed in the years ahead.
