The NPR Politics Podcast - Mitch Landrieu, The Man Biden Hopes Can Rebuild America, Bring Broadband To Millions

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is a $1.2 trillion law meant to spur a massive infrastructure renewal and rebuilding program complete with new bridges, railroads and highways.It also allocates $65 million to expand internet access to all.Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, is the man Biden tapped to make sure the massive job gets done.In this episode from Consider This from NPR, Scott Detrow speaks with Landrieu about the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides monthly $30 subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy Internet access, and with Kathryn de Wit, project director for the Pew Charitable Trust's Broadband Access Initiative, about why accessing the internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Sarah McCammon. Today on the podcast, something special from our friend Scott Detrow for Independence Day. His reporting from the Consider This podcast on Biden advisor Mitch Landrieu. Here's Scott. When President Biden delivered his State of the Union address this winter, the big emotional thrust of the speech was a law he had signed more than a year earlier. Projects are going to put thousands of people to work rebuilding our highways, our bridges, our railroads, our tunnels, ports, airports, clean water, high speed Internet all across America.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, a $1.2 trillion law that achieved two major promises of Biden's campaign for the White House, that he would put federal money into rebuilding the country, and that he could get Republicans and Democrats to actually work together and pass major legislation. And my Republican friends who voted against it as well. But I'm still, I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well. But don't worry. I promised I'd be a president for all Americans. We'll fund these projects. And I'll see you at the groundbreaking. This is the year that a lot of the money starts flowing to states and local governments. $225 billion of it so far. And if Biden wants voters to think about him as a president who got major life-changing projects passed and built before next year's election,

this is the year the act needs to start to stick more in Americans' minds. The man in charge of making sure that all of this happens, that money gets to state and local governments, that bids for the construction of these big projects go out in time, that enough people are signing up for the new programs, is former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu has spent the past 19 months fielding thousands of phone calls, making hundreds of trips across the U.S., and telling everyone he comes across how big of a deal the Infrastructure Act is. Well, I think it's clear now that we're not turning back. I think that's clear to everybody in the country that we're heading in a very specific direction where there is no reverse. Consider this. If Landrieu does his job right, he'll help connect tens of millions of people to high-speed internet, help usher in a new era of electric vehicles.

And if all of that goes to plan, he may help his boss win a second term in the White House at the unprecedented age of 81. Mitch Landrieu is something a bit rare these days, an unapologetic, professional politician. Somebody who will immediately try to charm every room he walks into. Even a room of mildly cranky, mildly self-important political journalists. What a handsome group. Y'all can't talk? How's everybody doing? What's going on? This is my office, you like it? It's in his blood. He's been in office for decades and he's the son of one-time New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu

and the brother of former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu. Now he's running a 15-person team coordinating with federal agencies, state governments, and local governments to get more than a trillion dollars' worth of major projects up and running as quickly as possible. My team's job, along with the president being our leader, is to build the team, get the money out of the door, and then tell the story. Flying from Washington to New York City on Air Force One this winter, Landrieu told me that even if the Infrastructure Act's projects will take years to be built, he's operating with urgency. We have intense focus every day, all day. It's all about hurry the hell up and get it done from the president's perspective. So that's just the way we roll. He's a get it done

guy. And he gets in the weeds. He travels and sees things on the ground. Ben LeBolt is the White House communications director. It feels like sometimes he's in more than five states a week. In January, Landrieu was flying with Biden to tout a major new rail tunnel in and out of Manhattan. In June, he was in Maryland talking up a $14 billion effort to provide internet access to people who can't afford it. Landrieu said he'd been on the phone with three officials already that day, including Maryland's governor. And then speaking to a crowd at a library, Landrieu insisted the internet access effort is his favorite program in the Infrastructure Act. Knowledge is the great equalizer. If you don't have access to technology

in order to access the knowledge, then you get left behind. The Affordable Connectivity Program gives monthly $30 subsidies for lower-income individuals to buy internet access. The Biden administration has gotten many internet companies to offer $30 plans at the same time, making access essentially free. About 19 million people have already signed up. People like Masal Mendez, who remembers having to stay late at school to finish homework he needed the internet for. This was honestly like super frustrating for me as a teenager because how many teenagers like want to go to school early, want to leave late or spend their weekends at a library? No teenager wants to do that.

The 23-year-old Texan was skeptical at first, but applied for the program and now pays $20 a month to get online, down from $50. It might not be much to some people. And people like me who come from like a low income immigrant household and background, like $30 is extra money for gas, for food, and for some people for rent. The internet program has political benefits for the administration too. The huge physical projects the Infrastructure Act will fund may take years to build. For your cheap internet access, that's immediate, understandable, and something voters may more quickly appreciate. But in Maryland, Landrieu is telling a room full of librarians

that the ACP is facing a bit of a problem. These are jelly beans to be given out in the bank to individuals who, if they're eligible for it, can just sign up. They're all in the library basement, training on how to get more people signed up for the program. Landrieu's telling them it's going to take some work. We have this thing going on where some people, notwithstanding our best efforts, say, well, I don't know. I'm so busy trying to get to work. I'm so busy trying to get from day to day.

I'm so busy trying to pick my kids up from school. The White House thinks an additional 30 million people who haven't signed up yet could be eligible. So Landry says a big part of his job is selling this. That means selling to the people who might need these programs and selling the broader idea of the act to the public. The idea is to make it simple for the public to get the benefit that the president says that they so desperately need, which is just access to knowledge,

which you cannot have if you don't have technology these days. You said a couple weeks ago when you were talking to reporters that you can make an argument that this act is as big of a deal as the New Deal or as the Eisenhower interstate. And I think that would be surprising to a lot of people. People would say that's a pretty big claim to make. I don't think it's just a claim. I mean, it is factually true. $1.2 trillion to rebuild the roads, the bridges, the airports, the ports, the waterways, high speed internet, clean air, clean water, clean energy economy is in real dollars as big as building the interstate system and what happened during the New Deal.

You could argue whether that was a little bit bigger, but we've only had three times in history where we've done that. So it's really kind of a silly argument to have. Right now, making sure that everybody in the country has access to the Internet is like electrifying the country. That's how transformative it is, because it's not it's not narrow or limited. It is actually ubiquitous, meaning it is everywhere all the time. That will take time to establish. Biden is up for reelection next year. So Landrieu will keep going as fast as he can.

This is kind of like the tortoise and the hare story. And with the tortoise in this story. Maybe just a very energetic tortoise. The Infrastructure Act spends $65 billion on internet access. That's the connectivity program, and then much more to build new broadband lines in places without high-speed internet. It's the sort of thing people like Catherine DeWitt have been calling for for years. DeWitt is the project director for the Pew Charitable Trust's Broadband Access Initiative. I talked to DeWitt to get a sense of what's working so far and what isn't, and I started by asking her what she makes of Landrieu's claim that the Infrastructure Act rivals the New Deal. I do, although to be fair, you know, maybe this is me drinking the Kool-Aid that I'm selling. But no, I do believe that.

But I think what is noteworthy about this moment that we're in is that we see folks moving away and policymakers in particular moving away from this idea that access to the Internet is a luxury. And instead, they are viewing it as a necessity. So that's really where I think the analogy brings true and plays out. I guess the part that I'm having a hard time with, you know, isn't the fact that this is a big problem that needs to be solved, but that this idea of, yes, this is a necessity, this is just as important as other basic utilities, wasn't addressed much sooner than it is now because it just seems to have been a fact of life for at least 15 years, probably more than that. The pandemic fundamentally changed the way that folks understood

what the absence of connections actually meant. When we saw students doing their homework in a Taco Bell parking lot or heard stories about teachers driving hours to make sure that kids had their paper packets of homework because they didn't have internet access available to download things in the home, I think what that brought home was just the sheer inconvenience and then inequities that came along with that inconvenience and with that lack of connectivity. And it also drove home that having your cell phone is not enough. That's not enough of a connection. It's really difficult to type out a paper or to do a telehealth appointment or fill out forms for a job on your cell phone.

And that's assuming your cell phone works, that that connection is reliable enough. I think that this shift and this impetus and significant investment of public funds in closing the digital divide is the direct result of, I think, a bipartisan agreement and understanding that enough is enough.

And we can't ignore the negative impacts that this has on our communities across the country when those connections are not available. The day that we spent with Landrieu, he was being very blunt about the fact that they need to get more people to sign up. The administration thinks as many as 48 million households could be eligible. 19 million people have signed up, but it's less than half of who could be eligible right now. What do you think the challenges are to getting that number higher? Marketing has been successful, but they need to do more marketing and outreach. Yes, you were correct. Only about half of eligible households have signed up to participate in the program,

but research and surveys have found that just about half of eligible households actually know that the program exists. So we certainly have a lot more work to do when it comes to marketing and outreach. But I think more to the point, this program is hard to sign up for. It's a multi-step verification process that can take several days. What folks on the ground have found is that it often takes someone sitting next to this person who is trying to sign up, really walking them through that process. So the $30 subsidies are the immediate end of this. And the federal government is spending something like $500 million a month already paying out these subsidies for the 19 million odd people

already in this program. Then there's the second half of it, the much more expensive, much more longer term half of expanding broadband infrastructure across the country to places where the internet is slower. How important is that aspect of things when you're talking about closing the digital divide? Essential. I mean, you really can't have one without the other. And these programs do have, call it a symbiotic relationship. And it is important, I think, for folks to understand that this benefit does go to the internet service provider. And that's important because it helps stabilize an internet service provider's revenue, and it helps increase their customer base. In

other words, it decreases their risk and uncertainty associated with expanding into markets that have high concentrations of low-income populations. Because those populations, whether they're low or middle income, even with a subsidy, sometimes they may have a difficult time paying their monthly internet bill. What are you worried most about as you look at the promise of these projects and the possible reality? States are heading into a really essential phase of their funding development. They're actually designing their programs right now. They're figuring out how they're going to spend this money. They're figuring out the award structure, project areas.

They have to be able to know that ACP is going to be there, that those funds are going to be there. So if there is uncertainty with ACP, if we're worried that that's going to run out in less than a year, that introduces a huge risk and a significant uncertainty to a process that's already very complex. That was Catherine DeWitt, Director for the Pew Charitable Trust Broadband Access Initiative. I'm Scott Detrow. You can find a link to subscribe to more from Scott and consider this in the show notes. We'll be back with a regular episode tomorrow. See you then.