Senators Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont) reintroduced the ReConnecting Rural America Act of 2025 at the end of October. Originally pitched to Congress back in April, the bill proposed awarding up to $650 million per year in grants for rural broadband buildout until 2030. The senators’ vision is high-speed internet for even the remotest parts of the nation. But the ReConnecting America bill doesn’t propose anything that the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program is not already doing.
There are a few differences that would have made it more attractive than BEAD had the two been introduced around the same time, namely a smaller overall price tag, a more focused plan, and a sunset clause. But its introduction four years into BEAD makes it immediately obsolete and duplicative.
Make no mistake, bringing high-speed internet to the farthest reaches of the nation is a worthwhile goal. Research finds that consumers dependent on slow internet connections—or those without—fall behind their peers in job opportunities and economic activity. Expanding high-speed internet to these hard-to-reach areas would be a boon to consumers. However, pursuing two nearly identical avenues to achieve the same goal would be a waste of tax dollars, and the similarities between ReConnect and BEAD are striking.
Framing is the most obvious similarity. ReConnect is framed as a critical investment in America’s future. In their statement, Senators Marshall and Welch compare their proposed broadband buildout to President Eisenhower’s once-in-a-lifetime push for highway buildout. But the BEAD program was also framed that way.
A narrow focus on buildout is another similarity. At its outset, the no-frills ReConnect bill prioritizes building new infrastructure to reach rural areas that are yet out of reach of high-speed service. Meanwhile, BEAD initially included labor mandates, a heavy preference for fiber-optic connections, and allowed for affordability and adoption programs. But after several rule changes this year, mandates for union labor were removed, fiber preference was struck in favor of tech neutrality, and approval for affordability and adoption programs was revoked until further notice. As it stands today, BEAD is just as doggedly focused on last-mile build-out as ReConnect is trying to be, though it took four years to get there.
Finally, both programs have defined end dates; BEAD as a one-time project, and ReConnect with a sunset clause. Research finds that the inclusion of a sunset provision can significantly reduce the total stock of regulation in a state. By automatically repealing a law at a predetermined date, sunset clauses force lawmakers to evaluate if a regulation is worth extending. Such an approach guards against regulatory bloat. The ReConnecting Rural America Act terminates its own authority after September 30th, 2030, giving the program a concrete end date. However, BEAD is a one-time project, not an ongoing subsidy scheme, so as smart as ReConnect’s inclusion of a sunset clause is, it doesn’t give the plan much advantage over BEAD.
Despite similarities, there are a few notable differences. Had these two plans been proposed at the same time, the cost difference might have made ReConnect a more attractive option. Even so, the differences don’t justify a second program.
The first major difference is in how each defines “high-speed internet.” ReConnect defines this as symmetrical speeds of 100 Megabits per second for both downloads and uploads. But BEAD defined it as 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. A new focus on symmetrical, or matching, speeds instead smacks of moving the goal post to justify the need for ReConnect.
In terms of cost, ReConnect boasts a far smaller price tag than BEAD’s historic $42.25 billion. By appropriating $650 million annually until 2030, ReConnect would hit a maximum of $3.25 billion. Even with states currently expected to save as much as $21 billion in BEAD funding, ReConnect’s maximum would put far fewer tax dollars into infrastructure that private internet service providers are already building themselves—BEAD-eligible locations dropped by 65 percent since 2021 due to ISP network expansion.
Finally, perhaps the biggest difference between the two programs is that ReConnect would approach the infrastructure buildout problem through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) rather than the Department of Commerce and the National Technology and Information Administration (NTIA), as BEAD does.
Putting two separate government agencies to work on the same task is a duplicative waste of taxpayers’ money, and BEAD was the first out of the gate. To implement a second infrastructure buildout plan before the other one is even complete would be counterproductive. As NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth emphasized, BEAD is meant to be the “last broadband funding program,” and funds will be awarded to states whose plans will not depend on future subsidies. With decisively building out last-mile connections without further subsidies being the final goal of the BEAD program, the only thing the ReConnecting Rural America Act brings to the table is continued subsidies through 2030—contrary to the NTIA’s goals. That is not a worthwhile contribution.
Ultimately, what ReConnect is trying to do is already in action. It may have had a few advantages over BEAD had it been introduced in 2021 rather than 2025, but today it would be duplicative. Consumers would be better served through the buildout program already underway without heaping an additional subsidy scheme on top of it.
Nate Karren is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.