AI megabill provisions

Senate Commerce Republicans pitch spectrum, AI megabill provisions

Chair Ted Cruz is touting the compromises as “transformational,” but at least one of them may not survive the Byrd rule.

By John Hendel and Anthony Adragna

Senate Commerce Committee Republicans reached a compromise Thursday to free up wireless spectrum in its portion of the GOP’s megabill, released late Thursday with several provisions critical to tech and telecom.

And in a surprise twist, the committee also sought to make a 10-year moratorium on enforcement of state AI laws a condition for the receipt of billions in federal broadband expansion funds.

“The Commerce Committee section invests in bold and transformational policies that will positively impact Americans now and for generations to come,” Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement, touting his plan for “turbocharging economic activity with expanded commercial access to spectrum.”

We’ve got a spectrum deal: After months of fighting between Cruz and defense hawks, Republicans seem to have reached a compromise on how to free up hundreds of megahertz of wireless spectrum. Lawmakers project it would raise $85 billion in revenue from these auctions — a valuable offset for the GOP’s priorities in the larger tax and spending package, although $3 billion less than the House GOP expected from its provisions.

The panel’s draft bill also would reauthorize the spectrum auction authority of the Federal Communications Commission through 2034, which lapsed in early 2023 — along with some concessions to military proponents who feared a spectrum auction could undermine the Pentagon’s use of technology like radar and the Golden Dome missile shield.

As for the AI provision: The committee rewrote a House-passed moratorium on state and local AI law enforcement, making the legal freeze a prerequisite for receiving internet expansion grant money from the $42.45 Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, or BEAD, program.

The proposal stipulated that “no amounts” of BEAD money “may be obligated to an eligible entity or political subdivision thereof that is not in compliance” with the moratorium, with some exceptions including for laws that remove legal obstacles to AI deployment.

The Senate version of the moratorium is a change from the initial House proposal, which had written the AI language into a provision setting aside funding or upgrading technology at the Commerce Department, including AI implementation.

Senators including Cruz and Majority Leader John Thune doubted that this earlier measure would comply with the so-called Byrd rule, which requires all measures being considered through the reconciliation process to be budget-related. But it’s not clear if the new Senate version will comply with the Byrd rule either.

Cruz said Thursday the Senate would send its proposal to the Senate parliamentarian next week for a ruling.