Republicans have just filed legislation in Congress which would eliminate “Lifeline”, which is a subsidy that makes phone service and broadband cheaper for those on lower incomes. This is a $9.25/month subsidy that is used to help low income Americans pay their cell phone bills and broadband, but the bill would keep the subsidy available for landline phones. This subsidy is one of the many surcharges found on your bill each month, that then goes on to help those that aren’t as fortunate, and have a smaller income.
Now what happens with this money is a bit odd, if the bill passes. Since customers won’t be paying less with this surcharge being removed, it would actually stay on your bill in 2018. However, the bill states that the money from this surcharge that doesn’t go to Lifeline users, would go to the Treasury department and help lower the national deficit. Now that may not mean a lot right now, but in the long run, this could help lower taxes for everyone, if the deficit is lowered. This bill has a somewhat small amount of supporters, only about 19 Republicans from the House of Representatives. The bill was brought before the House by Representative Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia.
This bill has come before Congress before, in fact multiple times before with the most recent one being in June 0f 2016 where it did not pass. So it’s unclear if this bill will pass, and how long it’ll take to actually pass. But this is an anti-poverty program that the US government has in place to connect low income families with the rest of the world. Now where the bill wouldn’t completely get rid of the program, but scale it back a bit, it may actually pass. But it’ll be tough to get Democrats onboard, however since the Republicans have the majority in both the House and Senate, this bill could likely pass with no Democrats or very little onboard. Again this is still early on for the bill, so this could be shot down rather quickly, or be taken to several votes, like the Healthcare bill in recent weeks.