FCC Chairman Brendan Carr exposed massive fraud in the federal Lifeline program, after an FCC Inspector General advisory revealed California, under Gov. Gavin Newsom, enrolled over 94,000 dead people for phone and internet subsidies, as part of a nationwide total exceeding 116,000.
The program, funded by telephone bill assessments, subsidizes low-income service but was vulnerable to abuse in “opt-out” states like California. As part of President Trump’s fraud crackdown, led by JD Vance, the FCC revoked California’s vetting authority, imposed a “lawful and living beneficiary” test, and is pursuing debarment to ban violators from all federal programs. Carr also slammed Newsom’s failed $450 million 911 upgrade.
Starting off his comments, Carr explained, “The Lifeline program is a federal program that you pay for. It is effectively an assessment that appears on your monthly telephone bill. We collect that money, and it goes to do a lot of things, but one of the things it does is to provide subsidies for phone or internet service for low income households.”
Turning his attention to the failed Newsom program, he added, “Well, turns out, over the years, it has been very attractive to fraudsters. And the FCC’s inspector general did a report and advisory and found that in California alone, over 94,000 dead people were signed up for and getting Lifeline in California — itself was in charge of vetting to see who’s eligible for Lifeline or not.”
“So we’ve now revoked California’s authority to conduct its own vetting. We now make California join almost every other state to go through a federal vetting process for Lifeline and we’re putting in place a very simple two-part test,” the FCC Chairman stated.
Building on this point, he noted, “To get these federal subsidies, you must be both a lawful and living beneficiary. Some people say we were setting the bar too high by a lawful and living beneficiary standard.”
Describing the egregious breach of protocol, Carr said, “There’s death registries, death databases that should be doing a much better job of vetting and checking. So we are starting a proceeding where we’re going to make sure that there’s a much better job being done of that.”
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Laying out exactly how Newsom failed the nation, he added, “The fraud goes much beyond that. There’s also a recent story where Gavin Newsom came in, and I think in his first week in office, said he was going to improve the state’s aging 911 systems. … Gavin Newsom pledged $450 million to solve that antiquated, outdated 911 system.”
The offical stated, Once they upgraded the system, they turned it on, it didn’t work. So they’ve shut it down. Apparently, as best as I can tell, the $450 million is gone, and California is still stuck on the old, antiquated 911 system.”
“Declaring the solution to this problem, he noted, There’s a whole — we call it debarment process, where if you’re caught violating one federal program, you should be kicked out from all federal programs. There’s been some holes in how that’s worked at the FCC, and we’re looking to close that out.”
Concluding his comments, Carr asserted, “So if you’re participating in a bad scheme at the FCC, you’re not just kicked out of FCC programs, but potentially all federal benefit programs. And so we’re looking to be much more aggressive there with the bad actors.”