GOP attack on Lifeline budget will hurt Oakland’s poor & millions more

GOP attack on Lifeline budget will hurt Oakland’s poor & millions more

Lynda Carson - April 13, 2016

Oakland - Just when you think that things are so bad that you want to start a revolution to stop the attack on the poor by the ruling elite, now comes H.R.4884.

H.R.4884 is a Republican attack on the budget of the Universal Lifeline Program, a federally subsidized phone program for the poor. The attack by Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) and his bill known as H.R. 4884, will harm thousands of low-income households in Oakland, and millions of poor, elderly and disabled persons across the nation.

Oakland and the northern Alameda County cities have the largest population of low income residents that need the assistance of the Lifeline program. Nearly one-half (46%) of County renter households that earn $25,000 per year or less, are located in Oakland. According to census data sixty percent (60%) percent of Alameda County's residents living in poverty reside in Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and Albany. Thousands of these residents including the disabled have the greatest need for services such as the Lifeline program to assist them in paying their phone bills, and they will all be placed in jeopardy if H.R. 4884 is passed into law.

The low-income renters of Oakland are in a housing crisis, and cutting off their phone service with H.R. 4884, would be cruel, and inhumane.

Civil rights groups across the nation including the NAACP, ACLU, National Disability Rights Network and other organizations are all united against H.R. 4884, a resolution that would literally take phone service away from millions of elderly, disabled and low-income persons across the nation.

If passed, H.R.4884 would impose a hard cap of $1.5 billion annually on the Lifeline program which helps the poor to pay their phone bills, and would end support for voice-only mobile phone services.

As recent as March 31, 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which provides funding for the Lifeline program, passed a new rule change to expand the program to include additional funding of $9.25 per month to cover the costs of broadband internet services.

If passed, H.R. 4884 would pretty much kill the plans of the FCC to provide a subsidy to help the poor, elderly and disabled get broadband internet service, in addition to ending phone service for millions of persons who already depend on the Lifeline program to assist in paying the costs of their phone service.

According to the Leadership Conference, “We believe that it is essential to ensure that people of color, low-income people, and other vulnerable populations have access to broadband. Without Internet access, students of color cannot do their homework, working single mothers cannot earn degrees online at night, and seniors and people with disabilities cannot utilize the most modern and accessible health care. Accordingly, The Leadership Conference was a strong supporter of the Federal Communications Commission's proposed modernization of Lifeline to include broadband, to address the persistent digital divide between those who have a broadband Internet connection and those who do not.”

Additionally, according to the FCC, 64 million Americans cannot afford to pay for internet access.

“The biggest reason these Americans don’t sign up for broadband is cost. Only half of the nation’s households in the lowest income tier subscribe to broadband. And 43 percent of all people who don’t subscribe to broadband at home say that affordability is the reason. Of the low income consumers who have subscribed to mobile broadband, 44% have to had cancel or suspend their service due to financial constraints and for those whose only access to the Internet is their smart phone, 48% have had to cancel or shut off service for a period of time due to financial hardship."

"We can recite statistics all we want, but we must never lose sight of the fact that what we’re really talking about is people – unemployed workers who miss out on jobs that are only listed online, students who go to fast-food restaurants to use the Wi-Fi hotspots to do homework, veterans who are unable to apply for their hard-earned benefits, seniors who can’t look up health information when they get sick.”

“Internet access has become a pre-requisite for full participation in our economy and our society, but nearly one in five Americans is still not benefitting from the opportunities made possible by the most powerful and pervasive platform in history.”

“We can do better. We must do better. Indeed, Congress told us to do better.  By modernizing the FCC’s Lifeline program, we will do better.”

“Lifeline was established in 1985 to help low-income Americans afford access to vital communications, and the program has allowed tens of millions of Americans to afford basic phone service. But at a time when our economy and lives are increasingly moving online and millions of Americans remain offline, it doesn’t make sense for Lifeline to remain focused only on 20th century voice service.”

Everyone interested in sending an email to Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) to tell him what you think about his scheme to cut off phone service to the poor, elderly and disabled, are free to do so.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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