The House will vote on a bipartisan bill on Tuesday designed to get tech companies to pay for the infrastructure and energy required to construct data centers.
The vote comes as data centers have become one of the most heated issues in the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans and Democrats alike have faced anger from voters anxious about the impact a data center built in their community will have on utility bills, property values, and quality of life.
Dubbed the Ratepayer Protection Act, the bipartisan measure was introduced by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and Kathy Castor (D-FL), who both face competitive reelections this fall. The legislation has 41 co-sponsors and passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously earlier this year.
“This bill coming to the House Floor proves that House Republicans are responding to the needs of the American people,” said Evans. “As the United States competes to win the global AI race and outcompete adversaries like Communist China, we must ensure that growth does not come at the expense of hardworking families.”
While the bill passed through committee unanimously, tech companies have raised concerns about provisions aimed at making them pay upfront for the energy infrastructure needed to serve their data centers. Environmental groups, meanwhile, think the bill does not go far enough.
They say the legislation would not force states to adopt the new reimbursement requirement. Instead, it would require states to consider the policy and decide whether to put it in place.
“The title of the Ratepayer Protection Act suggests it protects ratepayers from data center expansion; however, a more fitting title would be the Ratepayer Deception Act, since this legislation only speaks to a narrow category of utility costs. It leaves many costs from data centers unaddressed, including threats to water supplies, increased pollution, strain on local infrastructure, and land use,” Food & Water Watch wrote.
The House vote also comes as data centers have become an increasingly potent political issue ahead of November. The voter angst has complicated President Donald Trump’s effort to position the U.S. as the global leader in AI and data center development.
As opposition has grown, Trump has sent mixed signals about how Republican candidates should approach the issue.
‘If a Republican is against the data center, that’s OK with me,” said Trump, over the summer, offering room for Republicans to disagree with him as they have become an unpopular issue in many areas across the country.
Just weeks later, however, Trump suggested that communities that block the construction of data centers would end up “backwards and poor.”
The Trump administration has also sought to ease concerns about the effect of data centers on electricity bills by championing its Ratepayer Protection Pledge. So far, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI have already signed the pledge, committing to cover the power generation and infrastructure costs associated with their data centers rather than shifting them onto residential customers.
A White House official told the Washington Examiner that the bipartisan House measure set for consideration Tuesday builds on Trump’s efforts.
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“American families should not see electricity bills rise to subsidize the infrastructure needs of data centers,” said the official. “The White House welcomes Congress to take steps to legislatively codify the President’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge to keep American families from footing the bill for big tech and data centers.”
Despite Tuesday’s vote, the bill faces an uphill path to President Trump’s desk this Congress. Similar legislation by Sen. John Husted (R-OH) has yet to advance in the Senate, which has just three weeks before recessing ahead of the November election.