House Agrees To Florida Rep. Steube’s Measure, Shoots Down Funding For DEI At The FCC
TAMPA FREE PRESS – House Republicans continue to chip away at the “diversity, equity,” and inclusion” (DEI) bureaucrats hidden deep in the Biden administration.
This time, it’s a DEI group housed inside the Federal Communications Commission.
The House recently adopted Rep. Greg Stuebe’s amendment to defund the FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council.
According to an email from the Sarasota Republican to his constituents on Sunday, the FCC council would “advance progressive priorities by elevating the media presence of small businesses based solely on race or gender.
The House advanced Steube’s amendment by a voice vote, House records show.
“Our federal bureaucracy is riddled with wasteful and purposeless offices that do nothing but fuel the flames of divisiveness in our government,” the lawmaker said during a floor debate.
“These offices seek to treat people differently based on immutable characteristics like the color of their skin or their gender,” Steube continued. “That should be offensive to all of us in Congress.”
Steube further argued that the council’s presence and mission made it clear that the FCC is working for special, politically favored groups instead of the American people as a whole.”
Steube based his opposition in part to the council’s efforts to enforce a little-known rule in the 2021 infrastructure-funding law that sought to prevent “digital discrimination.”
“Democrats on the FCC seek to go beyond the plain letter of the law and define digital discrimination to include disparate impact as evidence of discrimination,” he added. “This means the FCC could find the 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,” said Steube.
In its charter document, filed in June, the council stated that its mission is “to provide recommendations to the [FCC] on how to empower people of color and others who have been historically underserved, including persons who live in rural areas, and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality, to access, leverage, and benefit from the wide range of opportunities made possible by technology, communication services and next-generation networks.”
The charter added that the council would “enhance the Commission’s ability to advance equity and diversity in the communications industry.”
In a separate statement, issued Thursday, Steube asserted that the Biden administration “is wasting our taxpayer dollars by infiltrating left-wing, progressive, ideology into almost every area of the federal government.”
“Americans are sick and tired of funding racist, discriminatory activities in the name of ‘DEI.’”
