Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. STEUBE. Mr. Chair, our Federal bureaucracy is riddled with wasteful and purposeless offices that do nothing but fuel the flames of divisiveness in our government.

Why is our Federal Government more concerned with advancing programs that fuel racism over the needs of the American people? These offices seek to treat people differently based on immutable characteristics like the color of their skin or their gender. That should be offensive to all of us in Congress.

Mr. Chair, my amendment would eliminate funding for the Communications Equity and Diversity Commission within the FCC. The mission of this woke DEI office is to advance ``equity in the provision of and access to digital communication services.'' Further, it seeks to advance progressive priorities by elevating certain small businesses based merely on the race or gender of the businessowner.

Through the establishment of this council, it is clear that the FCC is working for special, politically favored groups instead of the American people as a whole.

We are already seeing the products of these DEI policies at the FCC through draft rules implementing an obscure provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill that directed the FCC to prevent ``digital discrimination.'' Your guess is as good as mine as to what that has to do with infrastructure.

Democrats on the FCC seek to go beyond the plain letter of this law to define ``digital discrimination'' to include disparate impact as evidence of discrimination. This means that the FCC could find that internet providers are guilty of discrimination simply because some areas of the country have slightly better access to the internet than others, regardless of whether there is any evidence of actual, legitimate discrimination. Unfortunately, even our internet access is not immune to the scourge of DEI ideology.

Mr. Chair, these divisive DEI policies deserve no place in our Federal Government, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in rooting out this radical, progressive, and woke ideology.

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Mr. STEUBE. Mr. Chair, section 60506 of the IIJA mandates that the FCC develops a regulation to prevent digital discrimination of broadband access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.

Progressive groups and FCC Democratic Commissioners want to use this provision to promulgate a regulation that goes beyond intentional discrimination. They want to include disparate impact as a form of discrimination under the rule.

Under a disparate impact analysis, evidence of discrimination can be found solely in the outcome of certain practices. Essentially, internet service providers would have to provide the same exact product at the same speed to every customer in order to avoid a potential government investigation. If there is even a small difference in connectivity in an area inhabited by low-income individuals in comparison with wealthier areas, the FCC could claim the provider is guilty of discrimination under the draft rules promoted by these progressive groups and FCC Democrats.

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Mr. STEUBE. Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleagues to vote for this very good amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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