The Federal Communications Commission
Summary
The FCC's FY2025 Salaries and Expenses budget was $390.2 million and its own Chairman told Congress the agency employed 1,383 full-time staff by April 2025 -- about $1.14 per U.S. resident -- while a single fraud settlement that July clawed back $110,637,057, more than a quarter of the agency's entire annual operating budget, from one company gaming the Lifeline subsidy program.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
The Commission regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable⧉ -- granting the spectrum licenses that make wireless service possible. Since 1994 it has auctioned spectrum for more than $233.5 billion in government revenue through FY2024, at a program cost of under $2.6 billion -- about 1.1% of what it raised. On the licensing side, Chairman Carr told Congress the agency processed 85 space-station and 904 earth-station applications in a single 100-day stretch⧉ in early 2025.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
FY2025's Salaries and Expenses appropriation was $390,192,000⧉ -- entirely regulatory fees Congress requires the FCC to collect, not general tax revenue⧉, up 2.0% from FY2024's $382.4 million actual. Chairman Carr told Congress the agency employed 1,461 full-time staff at the start of FY2025 and 1,383 by April 28, 2025⧉, attrition from early-retirement and deferred-resignation offers. Divided across 342.4 million U.S. residents that October, FY2025 works out to $1.14 per person.
View data as table
| Office of Managing Director | 97,515 | 25.5% of budget -- agency-wide overhead |
|---|---|---|
| Enforcement Bureau | 45,466 | 11.9% of budget |
| Wireline Competition Bureau | 35,183 | 9.2% of budget |
| Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau | 28,370 | 7.4% of budget |
| Media Bureau | 28,100 | 7.3% of budget |
| Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau | 24,751 | 6.5% of budget |
| Office of General Counsel | 21,090 | 5.5% of budget |
| Wireless Telecommunications Bureau | 19,667 | 5.1% of budget |
| Office of Economics and Analytics | 17,129 | 4.5% of budget |
| All other bureaus & offices | 65,093 | 17.0% of budget -- OET, Space Bureau, OIG, OIA, Chairman/Commissioners, and five smaller offices |
Why is it good for society?
Spectrum and subsidy programs without an enforcer invite exactly the abuse the 's Enforcement Bureau and Inspector General exist to stop. In FY2025 the agency removed over 1,300 non-compliant voice providers from its Robocall Mitigation Database⧉, barring them from U.S. networks after they failed to certify compliance or cooperate with investigations. In July 2025, Q Link Wireless and its owner agreed to pay $110,637,057⧉ after fabricating usage records to keep collecting Lifeline subsidies for phones nobody used -- a single settlement worth more than a quarter of the 's entire annual operating budget.
- The 's FY2025 Salaries and Expenses budget was $390.2 million, funded entirely by regulatory fees -- about $1.14 per U.S. resident. A single Q Link Wireless fraud settlement that July recovered $110,637,057, more than a quarter of the agency's entire annual operating budget, from one company's Lifeline subsidy scheme.
- The 's own Chairman told Congress the agency employed 1,383 full-time staff by April 28, 2025, down from 1,461 at the start of the fiscal year -- a 5.3% decline from early retirement and deferred-resignation offers -- even as the spectrum auctions the agency runs have generated more than $233.5 billion for the U.S. Treasury since 1994.
Your handles.* Getting illegal robocalls or scam texts? File a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center. Want a say on a pending rule -- a proposed merger, a spectrum auction, a consumer-protection rule? File in the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) under the relevant docket number. Suspect fraud, waste, or abuse in an program like Lifeline? Report it to the FCC Office of Inspector General Hotline.
Sources(6) ▾
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel, U.S. House of Representatives (uscode.house.gov), 47 U.S.C. Section 151 -- Purposes of chapter; Federal Communications Commission created (2025-01-01) — The current U.S. Code text of Section 1 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. Section 151) -- source for the 's creation, its statutory purpose, and the original June 19, 1934 enactment date (48 Stat. 1064) carried in the section's editorial note. uscode.house.gov · original document
- Federal Communications Commission, Federal Communications Commission Agency Financial Report, Fiscal Year 2025 (2025-12-18) — The 's own audited annual financial report for the year ended September 30, 2025 (Chairman's message dated December 18, 2025) -- source for this entry's mission statement, organizational structure (bureaus/offices/field offices, current Commissioners), FY2025 actual Salaries and Expenses appropriations ($390,192,000), the regulatory-fee-funded/deficit-neutral financing mechanism, and the FY2025 Robocall Mitigation Database delisting count. docs.fcc.gov · original document
- Federal Communications Commission, Federal Communications Commission Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Budget Justification (2025-04-01) — The 's own FY2026 budget justification to Congress -- this edition carries FY2024 Actuals alongside FY2025 (Full Year CR) and FY2026 (Congress) columns in its bureau/office -and-funding table, and its own narrative on cumulative spectrum-auction revenue and program cost through FY2024. Used for this entry's FY2024 Actual /obligations (both by total and by bureau, feeding the figure), and the $233.5 billion cumulative auction-revenue / under-$2.6 billion program-cost figures. Wayback SPN save attempted once (returned HTTP 520, consistent with this outlet's documented SPN-outage hazard) and not retried per the one-probe policy; archiveUrl recorded null, non-blocking -- the document was downloaded directly from docs.fcc.gov and converted with pdftotext for this entry. docs.fcc.gov
- U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Appropriations (docs.house.gov), Testimony of Brendan Carr, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, before the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, House Committee on Appropriations ("Oversight Hearing of the Federal Communications Commission") (2025-05-21) — The Chairman's own sworn written testimony to Congress, posted by the House Appropriations Committee -- source for this entry's actual (not budgeted) full-time-employee counts at two dated points in FY2025 (1,461 at the start of the fiscal year; 1,383 as of April 28, 2025), the space-station/earth-station application processing throughput figure, and the FY2025 flat-funding context. docs.house.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Justice (mirrored by the Federal Communications Commission), Q Link Wireless LLC and Issa Asad to Pay More than $110M in Global Resolution to Resolve Criminal Charges and False Claims Act Allegations (2025-07-28) — The Justice Department's official press release announcing the Q Link Wireless / Issa Asad Lifeline Program fraud settlement, mirrored on the 's own document system (docs.fcc.gov) and quoting Chairman Carr and the Inspector General directly -- source for this entry's $110,637,057 settlement figure and the underlying fabricated-usage-records fraud mechanism, used in the 'why is it good for society' section. docs.fcc.gov · original document
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), based on U.S. Census Bureau data, Population (POPTHM) (2026-06-01) — FRED's monthly U.S. resident-population-plus-armed-forces-overseas series, sourced from Census Bureau data -- used here for the October 1, 2025 population figure (the FY2025 fiscal-year-end reference point) as the per-resident KPI's denominator. The live CSV endpoint (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=POPTHM) was fetched directly and returned the row used below; a Wayback SPN save of that CSV endpoint was also attempted as a backup capture and returned HTTP 520 (consistent with this outlet's documented SPN-outage hazard), not retried per the one-probe policy -- archiveUrl recorded null, non-blocking, since the live fetch itself succeeded and is the citation basis. fred.stlouisfed.org
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
The was created by Section 1 of the Communications Act of 1934⧉, enacted June 19, 1934 (48 Stat. 1064), to regulate interstate and foreign wire and radio commerce and centralize authority scattered across earlier agencies. Headquartered in Washington, D.C. with 13 field offices nationwide across seven bureaus and eleven offices⧉, it now answers to three sitting Commissioners -- Chairman Brendan Carr, Anna Gomez, and Olivia Trusty.