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House Energy and Commerce Chair Rep. Brett Guthrie on Wednesday said that the 10-year ban on state and local regulation of artificial intelligence included in US President Donald Trump’s party-line megabill isn’t likely to pass in its current form.
“I do believe it will change in the Senate — probably not be the full 10 years, be some kind of different timeframe,” Guthrie told Semafor’s Elana Schor at a Principals Live event in Washington, DC.
The AI regulatory moratorium is already drawing scrutiny from conservatives, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., admitting that she voted for the massive tax and spending bill without fully digesting the ban and saying she would have opposed it had she known it was included. Senate Republicans have already tweaked the restriction to make billions of dollars in federal broadband funding contingent on states and localities not regulating AI.
Guthrie said he would not “draw a red line” on what level of changes he’d accept to the megabill’s AI language, and he acknowledged that “we didn’t socialize it” among fellow Republican lawmakers as much as he would have liked to.
He added: “What I really want is enough time for us to get a bill that has federal standards on AI … at least that much time.”
“I want to come up with a bipartisan bill. Because we need stability,” Guthrie said.
Separately, the Kentucky Republican said he’s willing to weigh adding Senate-driven changes to Medicare into Republicans’ sweeping legislation.
“It depends on where the White House is,” said Guthrie, whose committee has jurisdiction over health care issues. He added that “if the Senate wants to bring that to the table, I would be open to discussing it.”
Also on Wednesday, Guthrie said he’d met Tesla CEO Elon Musk for breakfast the morning after the House passed the tax-and-spending legislation last month — but “that bill didn’t come up.” It was the only time the two men have met, Guthrie added.
“If he was lobbying to try to get EV tax credits fixed in the bill, he didn’t talk to the people that were writing,” Guthrie said, referring to allegations from White House allies that Musk clashed with President Donald Trump last week out of dissatisfaction with the megabill’s exclusion of those credits.
“So I don’t think he was” lobbying, Guthrie said of Musk.
Another bipartisan effort that Guthrie recommitted to Wednesday: permitting reform. He cited transmissions and pipelines as two top priorities for lawmakers.
“We need to do it in a bipartisan way,” Guthrie said. “If you don’t do it that way, then two years from now, it gets undone.”
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At the same event, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., called on Guthrie to prioritize bipartisan permitting reform over the GOP-only tax-and-spending bill.
“[Energy] Secretary [Chris] Wright is actually closer to our position on these critical issues in the reconciliation bill than he is on Republicans’ position,” Auchincloss told Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller.
“We are in violent agreement that we need to do energy permitting reform. But that is on the backburner while they are pushing through things that are counter to clean energy dominance.”
Like Guthrie, Auchincloss also underscored the need for Congress to pass a bipartisan AI bill.
“We’ve got to get much tougher on these platforms, not giving them 10 years of a free pass,” Auchincloss said. Mark Zuckerberg “is like a cartoon villain” for proposing that tech companies launch AI bots to befriend children. “We absolutely need to regulate that.”
Auchincloss, who voted for cryptocurrency-friendly legislation last Congress, said he had outstanding concerns over how GOP-led stablecoin legislation treats issuer Tether: “I’m very concerned that the initial versions of the bill were a giant giveaway to [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick and Tether.”
“I’m certainly not going to support that,” Auchincloss said.
When it comes to crypto broadly, “I also don’t think it’s Congress’ job to stamp on new technology,” Auchincloss said. “Regulate the outcomes, and let the market see if there are any useful cases for the technology.”
Asked whether he would consider running for Senate in Massachusetts, Auchincloss said that “the seats I’m interested in are the seats that give Democrats the majority in the House.” He declined to say whether he would endorse Sen. Ed Markey’s reelection bid: “I’ll let Senator Markey make his decisions.”