A small but significant slice of lawmakers – including several Republican members of the House and Senate – are getting cold feet over supporting the Trump administration’s reconciliation funding bill because it includes a House-approved provision that would impose a 10-year moratorium on state-level artificial intelligence regulation.
Several Republican lawmakers are saying that if the provision stays in the bill, they are voting no on the measure. With both houses of Congress narrowly divided on party lines, backers of the legislation can’t afford to lose much support.
“I support AI in many different faculties, however, I think that at this time, as our generation is very much responsible, not only here in Congress, but leaders in tech industry and leaders in states and all around the world have an incredible responsibility of the future and development regulation and laws of AI,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who presided over a June 5 House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee hearing on AI issues.
The congresswoman pointed to a clause in the reconciliation bill that would render states unable to enforce AI laws enacted within their state legislatures, and called it “a pause for 10 years in federalism.”
“When I voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill, I didn’t know about this clause, I thought I was voting on taxes, energy, and border security,” Rep. Greene said.
Rep. Greene is likely to get a second stab at voting on the bill. The Senate is working on changes to the House-approved measure, and if the Senate approves its own version of the legislation, the bill will need to have its differences reconciled by negotiators from both parties, followed by another vote by both chambers.
And the state-authority issue appears to be getting even more complicated on the Senate side after Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Republicans on June 5 introduced a new version of the moratorium clause which would require states to back away from regulating AI or lose Federal broadband funding.
Since the reconciliation passed the House on May 22, the state AI provision has faced pushback from senators who argued it may not pass muster under the Byrd Rule, a procedural Senate rule that prohibits matters not related to the budget from being included in reconciliation bills.
Other GOP members of Congress who have voiced opposition to the moratorium include Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, who hails from one of the few states that has successfully enacted AI legislation, has remained silent on his support for the clause but has previously advocated for Federal-level regulation.
“In the state of Georgia, jobs are extremely important, and AI … will replace jobs,” said Rep. Greene. “If our state cannot regulate or make laws to protect people’s jobs, people are going to go hungry, they’re not going to have paychecks … I’ll state it very clearly, I’m pro-humanity, I am not pro-trans-humanity. And when it comes to AI and regulation, when we get the vote on this bill, again, I will be voting no because of this clause.”
AI experts who testified at the Thursday hearing told lawmakers that while they generally agreed that a patchwork of AI laws could limit innovation – a common talking point used by Republicans who believe inconsistent state legislation would slow down AI progress – they could not predict what regulations would be needed for the technology in a decade.
While also looking to the future, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., warned against other lawmakers “learning the error of their ways in real time,” and instead supported further regulation of racial bias in AI models, saying that more civil rights enforcement is necessary before use of the technology is more widespread.
“Artificial intelligence reflects the assumptions of those who build it and the priorities of those who use it, and too often those priorities fail to include the safety, the rights and economic opportunity of Black communities,” said Rep. Pressley.
The AI moratorium received some support during the hearing from Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., who sought to clarify the ban. He said his reading of the clause is that states remain free to debate, pass, and enact their own AI laws while the Federal government is requesting a pause on enforcement, not mandating one.
“It’s the moratorium that’s asking the states to recognize that AI, by nature, is interstate commerce,” said Rep. Higgins.
More than 260 state legislators signed onto to a June 3 letter urging Congress to reconsider the moratorium, arguing that it would limit them from protecting residents from deepfake scams, discrimination, and job loss, and noting that there are still no Federal-level regulations on the technology.
“States are laboratories of democracy accountable to their citizens and must maintain the flexibility to respond to new digital concerns,” wrote the legislators. “Our deliberation over different approaches to AI and digital governance provides a stronger foundation for effective policymaking across the country.”
“Legislation that cuts off this democratic dialogue at the state level would freeze policy innovation in developing the best practices for AI governance at a time when experimentation is vital,” the letter reads.