The House voted 417-3 this week to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act, the first major bill on how data centers behind the AI boom affect utility customers’ bills to make it through Congress. Squad member Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was one of only three Democrats to oppose the bill.
Politico reports that the bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), now heads to the Senate. House Republicans have made it their signature piece of legislation heading into the midterms.
Only three Democrats voted against the measure, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Summer Lee (D-PA), and Delia Ramirez (D-IL), all progressives. Every Republican present voted yes. Tlaib claims the bill would “fail to meaningfully protect our communities.”
“Large load data centers must cover the full costs of any system updates they require, not families or small businesses,” Evans said. “We cannot accelerate this growth on the back of Americans working hard to pay their electric bill at the end of the month.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise joined floor debate Tuesday to back the bill, framing it as a way to manage the tradeoffs of the AI buildout. “As we’re advancing in technology, we’ve got to do it the right way,” he said. “Let locals make the choice, and let consumers reap the benefits.”
Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) worked behind the scenes to push the bill forward, arguing it lines up with the White House’s goals. President Donald Trump has been broadly critical of AI regulation.
The bill would require states to consider, though not adopt, a federal standard making large power customers responsible for covering 100 percent of the costs tied to new generation and transmission upgrades. That fell short of what some progressive Democrats wanted. Critics say it doesn’t actually force tech companies to pay for the energy infrastructure their data centers demand.
Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone raised similar concerns during floor debate, even as he backed the bill. “This bill is imperfect,” he said. “I want to promise that this bill is not the end of our focus on these issues; it’s only the beginning.”
The Senate has three weeks of legislative session left before the November midterms in which it could take up the bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said moving quickly would require a consent agreement among senators.
AI data centers and the integration of this technology is changing the political landscape. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at Politico here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.