The Universal Service Fund is one of the more important government programs you've probably never heard of.

The core idea behind the USF is laudable enough.

We as a society should spend some money on making sure that schools,

libraries, healthcare facilities, and remote areas have access to telecommunications and

information services, such as broadband. As its name suggests, this is precisely what the

Universal Service Fund aims to do. At its best, the USF seeks to spread the

benefits of technological innovation across the country and to help close what is often called

the digital divide. But having your heart in the right place is the first and by no means the last

step to creating a successful government program.

Unfortunately, the USF was made with the recipe for a failed government program.

Start pooling money. Put no check on how that pile of money grows. Designed the program so the

benefits go to concentrated interest groups while the costs are

dispersed across diffuse ones. Above all, make sure no one is really in charge. The USF started as a

modest, roughly 5% tax on people's telephone bills. As the program has spun out of control and the tax base of people

using landline telephones has shrunk, the tax has grown to around 30%. The size of the fund,

meanwhile, has more than doubled to around $10 billion a year. Needless to say, this path is unsustainable.

Experts and commentators from across the political spectrum recognize as much,

though unsurprisingly, they are deeply divided over what to do about it.

This is the tech policy podcast. I'm Corbyn Barthold.

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one man who could help me convey to our listeners how interesting the USF really is and how much drama and intrigue it can generate.

And that is our own Jim Dunstan General Counsel here at Tech Freedom.

I'm most pleased to welcome him back to the show.

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