Senate Clears Agriculture Bill With $109 Million for Rural Broadband

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11, 2025 – The Senate voted 60-40 Monday to pass a continuing resolution that would reopen the government, plus some appropriations bills. One of the pieces of legislation would provide about $109 million for rural broadband programs.

The Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program would see $50,750,000 of that. The bill would direct the funding to rural areas in which at least 90 percent of households lack access to speeds of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, provided there isn’t an existing state or federally funded deployment already planned. Recipient ISPs would have to deploy 100 * 20 Mbps.

Another $40,767,000 would be made available for distance learning and telemedicine grants, also managed by the USDA.

States, tribes, and nonprofits can apply for that funding to support devices, technical assistance programming, and other things. The remaining $17 million would go toward the agency’s Community connect program, which also supports broadband infrastructure.

“The three full-year appropriations bills would support veterans, troops, farmers, and rural communities in Maine and across the country,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement.

In a joint statement on the legislation passed Monday, the Senate said USDA “is reminded that the program is intended to be technology neutral and should consider projects which are able to showcase scalability for future need, speed of deployment to unserved areas, and cost per location of deployment while ensuring buildout speeds of at least 100 * 20 Mbps,” and that the agency should “take action to increase access to broadband on Tribal lands.”

For fiscal year 2025, Congress set aside $90 million for ReConnect. While crafting funding bills for 2026, the Senate initially proposed $35 million for the program while the House would have stuck with $90 million.

The House will have to vote on the Senate’s bills before they can become law – and before the government can reopen – which could happen as soon as Wednesday.

Since 2018, ReConnect has spent more than $5.5 billion on loans and grants supporting rural broadband projects.

The program took applications for a $700 million grant round last year, possible because of left over cash from larger previous appropriations, and has so far announced awards for $476 million of those.

A bill recently reintroduced by Sens. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan., would have funded ReConnect further into the future and set a 100 * 100 Mbps benchmark for projects funded by the program.