When Alfredo Camacho, a 41-year-old single father of three, learned about three months ago that the $30 discount he was receiving from the federal government on his monthly internet bill was at risk of coming to an end, he immediately began to think about what that would mean for his trips to the local grocery store. 

 “I use those $30 for a long ways now, like I could eat for two, three days,” he said. “I'll go to the clearance section and I'll get like two, three New York steaks for 20 bucks – that's enough for us, it’s protein, it's healthy.” 

“I got to make those $30 last,” Camacho added. 

Before Camacho started to receive the monthly internet subsidy, he and his wife were able to afford the full monthly price for broadband service in their small southern California city of Guadalupe with both of their incomes combined. Since then, the cost has increased, Camacho said, and he and his wife separated, leaving his salary as a delivery driver supporting himself and his three daughters. Finding an extra $30 a month to put toward internet service was going to be a stretch, he added. 

“I could eat three days with those 30 bucks, I’m not going to lose days without eating just because I need fast internet,” Camacho said. 

Fearing that if he cut it too close to the end of the program he would be charged a full month’s price for internet – something he said would put him financially over the edge – Camacho decided to cancel his internet entirely. 

“Everything’s automatic payment,” he said. “If I forget, they are going to charge me and then I’m really done.” 

For the last few months, Camacho and his three daughters, aged 15, 14 and nine, have settled into new routines. When they have access to WiFi, they download TV shows and movies onto a USB flash drive to watch later at home. Every night after school from 6:00-7:00 p.m., they park outside the local library to download any materials the girls need to do their homework while Camacho searches for additional job positions. 

“Right now, everything is based off of internet – all the homework and everything is internet, even if they have to do a project, they have to research it on that internet,” he said. “School nowadays is not how it used to be when I was going to school.” 

The Camachos are one of 23 million households likely finding themselves in a similar spot as a federal program that provided certain low-income families with monthly discounts on their internet bills runs out of funds at the end of the month. 

“A lot of folks are figuring out what they do when there's no benefit, which is in the month of June,” said Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, which connect independent community organizations around the country working on technology and broadband issues. “There's a lot of frustration, there are folks figuring out what their options are.”

Currently, Siefer said, community-based groups affiliated with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance such as libraries and housing authorities are in the process of talking to families who are facing an end to the monthly internet subsidies about their options, including switching to a reduced plan, canceling their service altogether or trying to find other places in their budget to make up for the extra internet cost. 

“Unfortunately, people are in this terrible position of being like well, I could not take my medicine every other month and then I could afford my internet or I could eat canned tuna five days a week instead of two days,” she said. 

The Affordable Connectivity Program – created by one of President Joe Biden’s most frequently touted pieces of legislation, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress in 2021 – provided qualifying households with a discount of up to $30 on their monthly internet bills. Those on Tribal lands received $75 a month. 

The monthly subsidy was a major tool for Biden – who has pledged to connect every household to high-speed internet by 2030 – to address the affordability aspect of the digital divide – something Siefer noted was put on full display during the pandemic. 

“I think there's not quite the full recognition that during the pandemic, so many more aspects of society went online and they stayed there,” Siefer said. “So schools that went to having computers and using those for homework are still using those for homework, they didn’t then reverse course and stop using the technology.” 

Without additional funds for the program approved by Congress, the Affordable Connectivity program, (ACP) began running out of money this month. As a result, monthly discounts in May were lowered to $14 for most households and $35 for Tribal ones. The government had already stopped taking new applications for the program in February and the funds, and thus the subsidies to households, are set to completely run dry in June. 

Efforts on Capitol Hill to direct more money to the program have thus far stalled. Some lawmakers in the upper chamber attempted to get funds for the ACP included in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act passed earlier this month. But facing a tight deadline on the must-pass bill before funding was set to expire, no amendments were brought to a vote -- including one that could have funded the ACP.

Another vehicle currently on the table to revive the program is a bill proposed by the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., which would use government proceeds from auctions on the frequencies used to provide wireless services, to allocate a fresh $7 billion to the ACP. The legislation, however, is still sitting in the Commerce Committee. 

An aide to Democrats on the committee said that Republicans on the panel need to be “willing to come to the table and work in common cause” on keeping the ACP funded, adding Democrats are continuing to “try to reach out and move forward.” 

A spokesperson for the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said “it would be irresponsible for Congress to spend another $7 billion of taxpayer funds without implementing comprehensive reforms.” 

“As both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have acknowledged, an honest analysis of the FCC’s data shows that the ACP has lined the pockets of large corporations and inflated Internet subscription prices without meaningfully improving connectivity for low-income Americans,” the statement continued. 

Cruz has proposed his own plan to keep the program alive in the form of a substitute amendment to Cantwell’s bill. 

The proposal designates $4 billion for the ACP from the reauction of inventoried AWS-3 spectrum licenses and includes reforms to the program, such as a new step to verify that a household is eligible as well as more stringent standards to qualify for the discount in the first place. Able-bodied adults without dependents, for example, would not be eligible and those on the program in urban areas would receive a discount of $10 a month rather than $30. The discount would hold at $30 for those in rural areas. 

With the program set to fully lapse in a matter of few days, Camacho, who noted that he would get internet service again if the subsidy came back, said his message is simple: “Thirty dollars goes a long way for a lot of people like myself.”

Spectrum News’ parent company, Charter Communications, has created a pre-written email for customers to send to their elected representatives to inform them they need the program extended or replaced. Broadband providers Verizon, Xfinity and AT&T also have resources on their websites aimed at keeping customers enrolled in the program connected with other affordable plans.