Nonprofit Urges Return of $22 Billion in BEAD Savings to Taxpayers

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2025 –  The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, once expected to cost more than $42 billion, may come in billions under budget, with watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste saying that up to $22 billion in savings belong to the taxpayers, not the states.

CAGW, hailing the savings as proof that cutting red tape and coordinating funding worked, reached a legal conclusion disputed by some, including Republican governors such as Louisiana’s Jeff Landry, as well as Gigi Sohn, Executive Director of the American Association of Public Broadband and Greg Guice, Chief Policy Officer of the Vernonburg Group.

In a blog post by CAGW State Government Affairs Manager Alec Mena said that while the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allowed surplus BEAD funds to be spent on “other activities related to improving broadband,” any such spending required approval from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The CAGW describes itself as a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.

West Virginia, for example, planned to fund telecom job training programs, while Louisiana proposed investments in rural healthcare, workforce development, virtual education, and small business digital readiness.

Mena argued that it was ultimately up to the agency to decide whether states could use leftover dollars for non-deployment purposes, such as workforce training. Broadband advocates Sohn and Guice, however, contended that the law required NTIA to let states retain and use the surplus funds.

Texas led the way with over $2 billion in savings, the largest of any state. The $42.45 billion BEAD program, created under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, could ultimately require only 40 percent of its original funding allocation. 

According to NTIA, the savings stemmed in part from revised BEAD guidance that removed non-statutory requirements related to labor, climate change, open access, and price controls.

States also benefited from leveraging funds from other federal programs, including the American Rescue Plan Act, the CARES Act, and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. North Carolina, for example, used $1 billion in ARPA funds and now needs only $408.5 million of its $1.53 billion BEAD allocation. Montana will spend $308 million of its $608 million allocation after deploying $310 million from ARPA funds to connect 57,000 locations.

South Carolina achieved the most dramatic reduction in need, spending over $400 million from ARPA, CARES, state, and private sources to shrink its unserved areas from 300,000 to just 27,000 locations. The state now plans to use only $41.3 million, 7.5 percent of its BEAD funds.

CAGW and former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly have urged that savings be returned to taxpayers or used strictly for broadband deployment. O’Rielly said the administration should “take a victory lap for finishing the job of connecting Americans” and require states to return unneeded funds as a “BEAD Bonus” for taxpayers.