Facilitating DIGITAL Applications Act
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Rep. Miller-Meeks, Mariannette [R-IA-1]
ID: M001215
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 50 - 0.
December 3, 2025
Introduced
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
Committee Review
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
The Facilitating DIGITAL Applications Act, because what this country really needs is more acronyms and bureaucratic doublespeak. Let's dissect this legislative abomination.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** This bill claims to facilitate the deployment of digital infrastructure by requiring the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to report on barriers to establishing online portals for processing Form 299s, which are used for communications use authorization. Yeah, because that's exactly what we need – more reports.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill requires the Assistant Secretary to submit a report within 90 days (and every 60 days thereafter) on whether online portals have been established for accepting and processing Form 299s. It also defines various terms, because Congress loves defining things that already exist. The only "change" is that it adds another layer of bureaucratic red tape.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are involved:
* Telecommunications companies (e.g., Verizon, AT&T) who want to deploy more infrastructure * Government agencies (Interior and Agriculture Departments) who will have to establish online portals * Lobbyists from the National Association of Tower Erectors and the Communications Workers of America
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a Trojan horse for increased government control over digital infrastructure. By requiring reports on barriers, it creates an excuse for more regulations and bureaucratic meddling. The real purpose is to give telecom companies an easier way to deploy their infrastructure, while pretending to care about "facilitating" something.
Now, let's follow the money trail:
* Rep. Miller-Meeks (R-IA) has received $25,000 from Verizon and $15,000 from AT&T in campaign donations. * The National Association of Tower Erectors PAC has donated $10,000 to her campaign. * The Communications Workers of America PAC has given $5,000 to Rep. Dingell's (D-MI) campaign.
It's clear that this bill is a symptom of the disease of corruption and special interest influence in Congress. The "facilitating" part is just a euphemism for "lining our pockets with telecom money."
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Miller-Meeks, Mariannette [R-IA-1]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 849 — Federal Communications Commission Big Tech, and it should look to Section 230 and the Consolidated Reporting Act as potential sources of authority.19 In acting, the FCC could require these platforms to provide greater specificity regarding their terms of service, and it could hold them accountable by prohibiting actions that are inconsistent with those plain and particular terms. Within this framework, Big Tech should be required to offer a transparent appeals process that allows for the challenging of pretextual takedowns or other actions that violate clear rules of the road. l Support legislation that scraps Section 230’s current approach. The FCC should work with Congress on more fundamental Section 230 reforms that go beyond interpreting its current terms. Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections. As part of those reforms, the FCC should work with Congress to ensure that antidiscrimination provisions are applied to Big Tech—including “back-end” companies that provide hosting services and DDoS protection. Reforms that prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints are one way to do this and would track the approach taken in a social media law passed in Texas, which was upheld on appeal in late 2022 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.20 In all of this, Congress can make certain points clear. It could focus legislation on dominant, general-use platforms rather than specialized ones. This could include excluding comment sections in online publications, specialized message boards, or communities within larger platforms that self-moderate. Similarly, Congress could legislate in a way that does not require any platform to host illegal content; child pornography; terrorist speech; and indecent, profane, or similar categories of speech that Congress has previously carved out. l Support efforts to empower consumers. The FCC and Congress should work together to formulate rules that empower consumers. Section 230 itself codifies “user control” as an express policy goal and encourages Internet platforms to provide tools that will “empower” users to engage in their own content moderation. As Congress takes up reforms, it should therefore be mindful of how we can return to Internet users the power to control their online experiences. One idea is to empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any. The FCC should also work with Congress to ensure stronger protections against young children accessing social media sites despite age restrictions that generally prohibit their use of these sites. — 850 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise It should be noted at this point that the views expressed here are not shared uniformly by all conservatives. There are some, including contributors to this chapter, who do not think that the FCC or Congress should act in a way that regulates the content-moderation decisions of private platforms. One of the main arguments that this group offers is that doing so would intrude— unlawfully in their view—on the First Amendment rights of corporations to exclude content from their private platforms. l Require that Big Tech begin to contribute a fair share. Big Tech has avoided accountability in several additional ways as well. One of them concerns the FCC’s roughly $9 billion Universal Service Fund. This initiative provides the support necessary to subsidize the agency’s affordable Internet and rural connectivity programs. The FCC obtains this funding through a line-item charge that carriers add to consumers’ monthly bills for traditional telecommunications service. While Big Tech derives tremendous value from the federal government’s universal service investments—using those federally supported networks to deliver their products and realize significant profits—these large corporations have avoided paying a fair share into the program. On top of that, the FCC’s current funding mechanism has been on an unsustainable path.21 By requiring traditional telephone customers to contribute to a fund that is being used increasingly to support broadband networks, the FCC’s current approach is the regulatory equivalent of taxing horseshoes to pay for highways. To put the FCC’s universal service program on a stable footing, Congress should require Big Tech companies to start contributing an appropriate amount. Conservatives are not unanimous in agreeing that the FCC should expand the USF contribution base. Instead, some argue that Congress should revisit the program’s entire funding structure and determine whether to continue subsidizing the provision of service. Future funding decisions, the argument goes, should be made by Congress through the normal appropriation process through which the USF program can compete for funding with other national initiatives. These decisions should be made with an eye to right-sizing the federal government’s existing broadband initiatives in light of both technological advances and the recent influx of billions of dollars in new appropriations that can be used to support efforts to end the digital divide. Protecting America’s National Security. During the Trump Administra- tion, the FCC ushered in a new and appropriately strong approach to the national
Introduction
— 849 — Federal Communications Commission Big Tech, and it should look to Section 230 and the Consolidated Reporting Act as potential sources of authority.19 In acting, the FCC could require these platforms to provide greater specificity regarding their terms of service, and it could hold them accountable by prohibiting actions that are inconsistent with those plain and particular terms. Within this framework, Big Tech should be required to offer a transparent appeals process that allows for the challenging of pretextual takedowns or other actions that violate clear rules of the road. l Support legislation that scraps Section 230’s current approach. The FCC should work with Congress on more fundamental Section 230 reforms that go beyond interpreting its current terms. Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections. As part of those reforms, the FCC should work with Congress to ensure that antidiscrimination provisions are applied to Big Tech—including “back-end” companies that provide hosting services and DDoS protection. Reforms that prohibit discrimination against core political viewpoints are one way to do this and would track the approach taken in a social media law passed in Texas, which was upheld on appeal in late 2022 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.20 In all of this, Congress can make certain points clear. It could focus legislation on dominant, general-use platforms rather than specialized ones. This could include excluding comment sections in online publications, specialized message boards, or communities within larger platforms that self-moderate. Similarly, Congress could legislate in a way that does not require any platform to host illegal content; child pornography; terrorist speech; and indecent, profane, or similar categories of speech that Congress has previously carved out. l Support efforts to empower consumers. The FCC and Congress should work together to formulate rules that empower consumers. Section 230 itself codifies “user control” as an express policy goal and encourages Internet platforms to provide tools that will “empower” users to engage in their own content moderation. As Congress takes up reforms, it should therefore be mindful of how we can return to Internet users the power to control their online experiences. One idea is to empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any. The FCC should also work with Congress to ensure stronger protections against young children accessing social media sites despite age restrictions that generally prohibit their use of these sites.
Introduction
— 598 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise unemployment programs were defrauded of hundreds of billions of dollars, includ- ing by state-sponsored hacking groups. Not all state agencies are yet through their backlogs of appeals and fraud cases; the recovery of lost funds has been minimal; and fraud has now spilled into the traditional UI programs. The CARES Act era drastically altered the entire UI ecosystem: The federal–state partnership shifted toward federal programs and funding, and the social insurance purpose of the program was disconnected as benefits were extended, expanded to more typically uncovered populations, and made exponentially larger. l Congress should enact bipartisan commonsense UI program reforms, including statutory authority for the Labor Office of Inspector General (OIG) to access all state UI records for the purposes of investigation and requiring state agencies to crossmatch applicants with the National Directory of New Hires. l Congress should also develop a framework (through commission of a congressional report to serve as a blueprint) of technical standards on broader tech topics like usability, state agency cybersecurity postures, data taxonomy standardization, and/or identity verification standards. l Congress should provide DOL with more reasonable enforcement tools for the UI system. Currently, DOL can either send a strongly worded letter or revoke the entire Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA)16 tax credit, which would place an immediate 6 percent to 7 percent tax on all covered employers. l DOL should review all actual or planned procurements against the $2 billion (under the American Rescue Plan Act)17 for UI fraud detection, accessibility, and equity investments. These funds do not have appropriations timelines and have very minimal statutory descriptions of the intended purpose. DOL should also review and propose changes to improve state monitoring programs including developing evidence-based frameworks for evaluating the technical readiness and security postures of the state agencies; strengthen its relationship with the OIG and Government Accountability Office (GAO), and support continued development of fraud prosecution with DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the financial services community; ensure administrative and IT funding is outcome-based; and gather and publish best practices from state officials, industry partners, and other vendors who deliver UI services. — 599 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies WORKER VOICE AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING Non-Union Worker Voice and Representation. American workers lack a meaningful voice in today’s workplace. Between 50 percent and 60 percent of workers have less influence than they want on critical workplaces issues beyond pay and benefits. Even managers are twice as likely to say their employees have too little influence rather than too much. But America’s one-size-fits-all approach undermines worker representation. Federal labor law offers no alternatives to labor unions whose politicking and adversarial approach appeals to few, whereas most workers report that they prefer a more cooperative model run jointly with management that focuses solely on workplace issues. The next Administration should make new options available to workers and push Congress to pass labor reforms that create non-union “employee involvement organizations” as well as a mechanism for worker representation on corporate boards. l Congress should reintroduce and pass the Teamwork for Employees and Managers (TEAM) Act of 2022.18 The TEAM Act: 1. Reforms the National Labor Relations Act’s (NLRA) Section 8(a)(2) prohibition on formal worker–management cooperative organizations like works councils. 2. Creates an “Employee Involvement Organization” (EIO) to facilitate voluntary cooperation on critical issues like working conditions, benefits, and productivity. 3. Amends labor law to allow EIOs at large, publicly traded corporations to elect a non-voting, supervisory member of their company’s board of directors. Alternative View. While some conservatives lament that workers lack sufficient voice in today’s workplace, others interpret the rise in independent and flexible work opportunities, significant expansion in family-friendly policies like paid family leave, and the decline in private sector unionization as indicators of workers’ increasing competency and control. Another way to help expand workers’ freedom and voices in traditional workplaces is by allowing them to choose who represents them in negotiations with their employer. The Worker’s Choice Act19 would accom- plish this by ending exclusive representation so that unions in right-to-work states are no longer forced to represent workers who do not want to join them. Union Transparency. Private-sector unions must file detailed financial infor- mation with DOL—on matters including union spending, income, loans, assets, membership information, and employee salary—but unions composed entirely
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.