Saturday, 13 September 2025

Senate Removes Controversial Provision From ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

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The Senate struck down a provision in the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ that restricted state and local governments from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence for 10 years.

The Senate voted 99-1 to scrap the moratorium after an onslaught of criticism from Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) proposed an amendment to strike the ban from the legislation during the upper chamber’s “vote-a-rama.”

More details from the Associated Press:

Originally proposed as a 10-year ban on states doing anything to regulate AI, lawmakers later tied it to federal funding so that only states that backed off on AI regulations would be able to get subsidies for broadband internet or AI infrastructure.

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A last-ditch Republican effort to save the provision would have reduced the time frame to five years and sought to exempt some favored AI laws, such as those protecting children or country music performers from harmful AI tools.

But that effort was abandoned when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on Monday night to introduce an amendment to strike the entire proposal.

Blackburn said on the floor that “it is frustrating” that Congress has been unable to legislate on emerging technology, including online privacy and AI-generated “deepfakes” that impersonate an artist’s voice or visual likeness. “But you know who has passed it? It is our states,” Blackburn said. “They’re the ones that are protecting children in the virtual space. They’re the ones that are out there protecting our entertainers — name, image, likeness — broadcasters, podcasters, authors.”

Voting on the amendment happened after 4 a.m. Tuesday as part of an overnight session as Republican leaders sought to secure support for the tax cut bill while fending off other proposed amendments, mostly from Democrats trying to defeat the package.

Proponents of an AI moratorium had argued that a patchwork of state and local AI laws is hindering progress in the AI industry and the ability of U.S. firms to compete with China.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Sunday the effort to scrap the provision would benefit China.

However, a group of Republican governors vehemently opposed the moratorium.

17 Republican governors wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson asking to remove the controversial provision.

Over A Dozen Republican Governors Want Section Of ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ REMOVED

"I stand with a majority of GOP governors against stripping states of the right to protect our people from the worst abuses of AI. The U.S. must win the fight against China – on AI and everything else. But we won't if we sacrifice the health, safety, and prosperity of our people," Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

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Reuters noted:

Republican Senator Thom Tillis was the lone lawmaker who voted to retain the ban.

The Senate version of Trump's legislation would have only restricted states regulating AI from tapping a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure.

Major AI companies, including Alphabet's Google and OpenAI, have expressed support for Congress taking AI regulation out of the hands of states to free innovation from a panoply of differing requirements.

Blackburn presented her amendment to strike the provision a day after agreeing to compromise language with Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz that would have cut the ban to five years and allowed states to regulate issues such as protecting artists' voices or child online safety if they did not impose an "undue or disproportionate burden" on AI.


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