Politico reported this week that pressure is building on House Republican leaders to schedule a floor vote before the midterms on a bill meant to stop data centers from pushing up their constituents’ electricity bills.
The framing across the coverage is that a broadly popular measure is stuck because leadership will not move it, which is true and also skips the part that explains everything: the bill only became unanimous because it was narrowed in a way that created one large, well-funded enemy and let every other enemy off the hook.
The Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 22 by 52 votes to nothing. A 52-0 vote reads as consensus. It was closer to a purchase.
What the Bill Does, and What It Stopped Doing
Sponsored by Rep. Gabe Evans, a Colorado Republican, and Rep. Kathy Castor, the Florida Democrat who is ranking member on the energy subcommittee, the bill would require states to consider adopting a federal standard directing data centers to pay the full cost of the new generation and transmission capacity built to serve them. Evans’ office described it as protecting Americans from paying for data center development, and the committee announced its passage as commonsense legislation.
As introduced, it did not say data centers. It applied to any customer with peak electricity demand above 100 megawatts. That version covered server halls, steel mills, aluminum smelters, chemical plants, anything large enough to require new grid capacity. Then the committee narrowed it, and E&E News reported the consequences immediately: the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Industrial Energy Consumers of America welcomed the change, because the change exempted them.
The Data Center Coalition did not. Its president, Josh Levi, complained that the rework singles out the data center industry while leaving everyday Americans exposed to costs from large load growth in other industries as they expand. That is a self-interested argument from an industry lobby, and on the policy it is also correct, which is an awkward place for the bill to be.
The tell is what happened to the tech companies. Microsoft and Google had endorsed the original, broader version. Neither has publicly backed the narrowed one.
The Arithmetic Behind the Panic
The reason members want this on the floor is not abstract. Residential electricity prices are up more than 36 percent since 2020, from 12.76 cents per kilowatt-hour to 17.44 cents as of February, and some regions are absorbing annual increases above 25 percent. A Bloomberg analysis of prices near heavy data center activity found monthly costs as much as 267 percent higher than five years ago. Gallup found roughly seven in ten Americans oppose an AI data center being built in their area.
Then there is the map. Of the 69 House districts expected to be competitive this November, nearly all already host at least one data center and 40 have more planned or under construction. NPR found the issue driving primaries as early as the first week of August; by the middle of the month CNBC was tracking it in campaign advertising across Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas, and TIME described Republicans scrambling to reposition on projects their own leadership spent two years courting. We wrote earlier this month about how the power bill turned data centers into a bipartisan campaign issue, and before that about the $64 billion in projects communities have already blocked or delayed.
Committee chair Brett Guthrie wanted the bill through the House before the August recess. It did not happen. Rep. Bob Latta has publicly urged leadership to bring it to the floor. It still has no date.
Where We Stand
The narrowing was the mistake, and the people who made it should own it rather than blaming a leadership calendar.
The principle in the original draft was clean and easy to defend on a doorstep: if you are a new customer big enough to require the utility to build new generation and new transmission, you pay for the generation and transmission you require, and your neighbors do not. That applies to a server hall. It applies identically to a smelter. Carving the threshold down to data centers alone converted a general rule about who pays for growth into a targeted measure against one industry. It bought a unanimous committee vote by removing steel and heavy industry from the bill’s reach, and in exchange it handed the tech lobby a legitimate fairness objection and cost the bill the two largest corporate endorsements it had.
That is why there is no floor date. Leadership is not weighing 52-0 against some hidden opposition caucus. It is weighing a bill that now has exactly one motivated, extremely well-resourced opponent and no offsetting corporate champion, in an election year, with the AI industry spending heavily. Members who want this passed should restore the 100-megawatt threshold, take the steel lobby’s complaints on the record, and dare the majority to explain why large customers should not pay for the capacity they demand.
Congress adjourns for the pre-election period soon, and after that the calculation changes entirely. If voters spend October opening 30 percent higher bills with no vote having been held, the bill’s sponsors will not be the ones asked to explain it.