Supreme Court takes up $8B phone and internet subsidy for rural areas | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court takes up $8B phone and internet subsidy for rural areas

apnews.com

36 pointsvoxadam69 comments

The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be. The FCC keeps raising the tax rate. 10% of your mobile phone bill now goes to this fund that seems was decided by bureaucrats at the FCC and not by Congress. If the court strikes it down, then Congress will have to step in, which seems appropriate.

If Congress chose not to specify it and therefore delegate the decision, shouldn't it be up to them to pass a new law to specify it if needed if they think the executive branch has raised it too much?

Why is this a situation where the supreme court should step in?

It's probably not, but the current administration doesn't want to pay any of the bills for the people producing their food. A penny spent on the less fortunate is one that doesn't go into their pockets.

You can't eat pennies

these pennies do power the inernet and phones of your libraries though. And compared to the overall budget, calling these costs pennies is a magnitude too large.

I was making a point that they are only trying to steal and hoard money, which when they are the only ones with money, money will have no value and you can't eat them.

It could be that the power to lay taxes is granted solely to Congress in the Constitution.

IANAL, so the clarity of Article 1 section 8 may be not what the words seem to say

And the FCC is empowered by Congress to act on their behalf.

It's the same top-down approach used all over the business world and organizations like the military. The people at the top make high level decisions and empower those below them to handle the fine details.

I don't go to the board of directors of my company to approve every decision I make. They outline strategic goals, hand those to the CEO, who gives plans to the heads of departments, who hand them down to me.

It's so weird to see people latch onto this idea that Congress needs to handle the minutia of governing when we know that top-heavy, leaders-make-every-decision form of governing doesn't work. Imagine a drive thru operator needing board approval to substitute mayonnaise for ketchup on an order because the Article 1 Section 8 of the corporate charter says the board has sole responsibility over the menu, and mayonnaise on a burger is not on the current menu.

'just delegate the minutiae of governing... like levying taxes'

Maybe it's just me but taxes don't seem like a minutiae item.

Neither is overturning one as unconstitutional that Congress explicitly created and the President signed into law, especially on the sole basis of "well we're not certain Congress still wants it, even though they could get rid of it easily if they cared".

I believe the argument is that Congress is not constitutionally allowed to delegate determination of the amount of that tax because the first words in the US Constitution are "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States" and specifying the amount of that tax is clearly "legislation"? The executive branch is granted little or no legislative power.

From a practical standpoint at least some voters know who their US Senators and US Representative are and a few of those will actually look up how they voted on a tax hike or cut and include that information into their decision making process on who to vote for every two to six years. Very few voters know who the unelected bureaucrats in administrative agencies are, those bureaucrats change without the direct consent of voters, and they never stand for election.

The linked article says "Liberal and conservative justices alike said they were concerned about the potentially devastating consequences of eliminating the fund that has benefited tens of millions of Americans". It's fine that the court is "concerned" about this, however it is not something the court should consider in the slightest in their decision this case - those are the effects of policy decisions which should be left to elected legislators in a properly functioning democracy. If the court finds in favor of the plaintiffs, Congress is free to go do their job and pass legislation that specifies the amount of the tax just as they do with Federal income tax (showing they have the _ability_ to do so).

> I believe the argument is that Congress is not constitutionally allowed to delegate determination of the amount of that tax because the first words in the US Constitution are "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States" and specifying the amount of that tax is clearly "legislation"?

The powers "herein granted" include "To provide and maintain a Navy", but that doesn't mean they can't delegate aspects of running the Navy to the Executive. We don't have to pass a new law every time the Navy sails a ship to Australia.

That's because you changed what's actually happening to something way bigger, so then you can immediately say it's not minutiae.

This isn't taxes, this is one very specific and small tax. And this isn't levied by the FCC, it's levied by Congress. The FCC just gets to say what percentage of this specific tax is applicable.

So the FCC gets the power to change what percentage of phone bills should go towards universal telephony access. Put this way, you know, the thing that's actually happening, it does seem like minutiae.

I doubt Congress has any idea what percentage of phone bills should go towards universal access because they're not telecommunications experts. They don't know how hard, or easy, it may be to run rural lines. They don't know what lines are still needed. They don't know where they're needed. In fact, they don't even know what phone bills should cost!

the rollout of this program has gone badly.. when there is a button to push for more money, that seems to be the one thing that always does happen. Pure theory does not deal with the actual implementation of this national program.

entertaining and skilled - recommend Princeton University, Center for Information Technology Project, "No WANs Land: Mapping US Broadband Coverage" .. you might be surprised!

I get the idea of Congress delegating execution, but setting a tax rate should, like declaring war, be held by the Congress.

The legal question is identified in the original reporting on the lower court's ruling:

> Oldham said the USF funding method unconstitutionally delegates congressional taxing authority to the FCC and a private entity tapped by the agency, the Universal Service Administrative Company, to determine how much to charge telecommunications companies. Oldham wrote that “the combination of Congress’s broad delegation to FCC and FCC’s subdelegation to private entities certainly amounts to a constitutional violation.”

This certainly seems to me like an important question for the Court to weigh in on. The power to tax is clearly Congress's, but it's not clear that we should want Congress to have the power to delegate that power to anyone they choose.

https://apnews.com/article/rural-access-broadband-universal-...

> The issue is not if the fund is needed or not, it is that congress never specified how much the Universal Service Fund tax would be.

Congress could, if they didn't like the regulators' chosen amount, set a new fixed amount with a couple lines of legislation and a vote. Done in a day.

People always like to complain about unelected (as if any were elected?) bureaucrats.

The president picks the head of the FCC.

Any president could have adjusted the fee. This is all fully under the control of elected officials.

My complaint with presidential nominees having extensive power is that it moves too much policy to hinge on a single, nationwide election. As we've seen, that can lead to extreme instability versus congressional legislation.

True

Also, the president only has as much power here as congress delegates. They could delegate less.

If the USF is struck down two things will happen 1. Elon will get feweer subsidies. Starlink is enriched heavily by USF 2. Rural areas will be continue to have terrible options for terrestrial services. 3. There may be a resurgence of municipal-owned internet but the ISPs seem to have sued that out of existence to date.

Maybe congress will just rewrite a new USF. I wonder what satellite internet company would magically be the only one who can meet the new USF requirements?

Elon already receives subsidies from USF. All of Elon's riches come from government funds. If Elon has a company or project, you should just assume it is funded by government contracts, grants, and subsidies because it likely is in some capacity.

Why would the executive branch feel the need to enforce any of these rulings on Elon or his companies?

I don't know where the USF monies go but it certainly isn't here.

I suspect the likes of AT&T and Google get the lion's share and then through sleight of hand it somehow funds build outs of fiber in large metro areas. If it weren't for the local independent telcos scratching and clawing for a few crumbs, there wouldn't be any FTH in rural areas.

A few years back .gov allocated considerable funds for expanding, presumably, FTH in "rural" areas. The state I live in did the same. So far in the AT&T monopoly, not an inch of fiber has been plowed that I can see. Most of the funds have probably been laundered back to the politicians and the status quo remains.

A new WISP has been putting up sites over the past several months in parts of the AT&T service area with no other terrestrial service available. This, even in the age of Star Link. I doubt they would be doing so unless they had a pretty good idea that no FTH will be available for five to ten years or at least long enough to amortize their investment.

Like most taxes levied on We The People, the USF is a PR stunt intended to buy votes.

They should kill it. It makes no sense that the EPA can't do it's basic job but this shakedown exists.

Conservatives haven't had to live with the consequences of their decisions. They still get their farming subsidies. Their phone and Internet subsidized. Flood insurance. Countless other programs overwhelmingly help red states.

We used to have an agreement in this country. That everyone was going to be better off. Now the conservative story is all about hurting the right people.

So let's do it. Every state for themselves. Blue states can help other blue states if they want to. Same with red states. Cut off the basic function of the federal government.

I'm tired of my tax dollars helping people who don't want what's best for me and my family while I go out there and advocate for them.

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