Multistate AI Group Seeks GOP Buy-In Against 10-Year Moratorium
Members of a bipartisan multistate AI policy working group are preparing an open letter opposing a U.S. House proposal that sets a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state AI laws (see 2505120067), Maryland Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D) told us Tuesday. Virginia Del. Michelle Lopes Maldonado (D), another working group member who has helped spearhead AI legislative efforts in her state, told us the House proposal appears to be part of a concerted industry effort to kill forward momentum on state AI bills. Meanwhile, senators we spoke to on Capitol Hill split largely on party lines about the plan Tuesday.
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Hester said she’s reaching out to Republicans who co-signed the group’s December open letter. Signees included Texas Rep. Giovanni Capriglione (R), whose AI bill has been at the center of a debate on AI policy driven by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas (see 2504070074). Republicans from Kentucky, Alaska and Montana also signed the first letter.
The House Commerce Committee on Tuesday held a markup that included budget reconciliation language that would impose a 10-year moratorium blocking states from enforcing AI regulations. The markup started at 2 p.m., and members focused on health care-related provisions in the hours leading up to our deadline. Cruz previously said he plans to introduce a pro-innovation AI proposal modeled after a 10-year internet tax moratorium that President Bill Clinton signed in 1998.
Hundreds of Republicans and Democrats at the state level are working through AI proposals and are in agreement on general principles for data privacy, transparency and cybersecurity, said Hester: States “should be the laboratories of innovation for how best to govern AI, not the federal government acting with overreach outside of congressional authority outlined in the 10th Amendment.”
Maldonado told Privacy Daily the House proposal only accounts for business interests: A 10-year moratorium on state AI policy enforcement seems “outsized for the speed at which technology evolves.” It’s not “reasonable for what we are dealing with." States have a responsibility to fill gaps between federal law and what’s needed at the state level, she added.
Asked Tuesday about the House proposal, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told us he has yet to review the AI language. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a member of a 2024 AI working group under then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told us Tuesday he supports the House proposal. Congress has responsibilities to interstate commerce, and having a “hodgepodge” of AI regulations across the country is a “bad outcome,” he said. “I’m open to modifications” to the House language, but the concept “is correct.”
However, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., another member of Schumer’s working group, said he doesn't think a 10-year moratorium is "appropriate given the fact that the Congress hasn’t exactly been forward-leaning in terms of creating logical guardrails ourselves.” There would be a better argument for state preemption if Congress had passed bipartisan AI legislation, said Heinrich, adding that he hopes the current proposal “won’t go anywhere.”
“I’ve never heard of that. I didn’t even know that’s legally possible,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who represents the only state with a comprehensive AI law on the books. The House proposal “takes lawlessness to a new level.” Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., called the House proposal “short-sighted.”
California Privacy Protection Agency Executive Director Tom Kemp, in a post Monday, cited the proposal's potential impact on privacy protections. “We urge Congress to strike this provision and uphold its longstanding approach to federal privacy and technology legislation: establishing a baseline for protections while preserving states’ authority to adopt stronger laws.”