More than 30 Democratic members of the House of Representatives are urging top Senate leaders to reconsider a proposal being offered in the Senate that would require states seeking Federal broadband support to abide by a proposed ten-year moratorium on creating state-level artificial intelligence (AI) regulations.
The ten-year state AI regulation moratorium is included in House-approved reconciliation legislation. In the Senate version of the bill currently being worked on, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas has proposed an alternative measure that would block broadband funding to states that do regulate AI tech.
In a June 12 letter addressed to Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who serve as chair and ranking member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Ranking Member Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. the House members pleaded for the Senate to strike a provision that would require those states wanting access to the federal government’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to comply with a state AI ban.
The BEAD program was created as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 to close the digital divide by expanding high-speed internet access by providing $42.5 billion in grants across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.
“The BEAD program is a once-in-a-generation investment to close the digital divide in areas across our nation that have long been overlooked,” the House members said. “In contrast, the reconciliation text’s AI moratorium provision represents a reckless and dangerous attempt to force states to forfeit their ability to protect the public from the rapidly escalating risks of unregulated AI and automated decision systems. It is textbook federal overreach.”
Since no current Federal regulation of AI tech exists, states that are hotspots for technology innovation – such as California – wouldn’t be able to place safeguards on that innovation to protect citizens, lawmakers argued in their letter.
“Rather than hold the administration accountable for betraying BEAD’s commitment to connectivity, the AI moratorium provision would destabilize BEAD further by allowing the administration to claw back long awarded funding from states unwilling to relinquish their role in ensuring safe and responsible AI innovation,” the lawmakers wrote.
The Senate’s provision to tie BEAD funding to the state AI regulation moratorium comes in the wake of this week’s overhaul of the BEAD Program, which eliminated “burdensome regulations” established by the Biden Administration according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The changes also put in place a “tech-neutral” approach to funding broadband, replacing the program’s previous focus on fiber-centric infrastructure.
The move also halted most program participants’ progress – specifically those who were still selecting their subgrantees – by requiring adoption of the revamps in further subgrantee selection processes.
Pushback on that entangled with the House members’ letter – voicing further concerns from Democrats over the moratorium
Some Republicans also have decried the state regulation ban, led in part by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who called it “a pause for 10 years in federalism” and said she would vote against the Trump administration’s reconciliation funding bill if the measure were maintained.
Rep. Greene has been joined by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo. who have also expressed disagreement with the spending bill’s ban.
A recent letter signed by 60 civil rights organizations led by the Leadership Conference’s Center for Civil Rights and Technology demanded that senators remove the AI ban from the reconciliation bill. Another letter signed by more than 260 state legislators similarly demanded that the moratorium be withdrawn.