Congress’ AI moratorium isn’t dead yet, Rep. McCormick says
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., speaks during a panel session at GovExec's Government Efficiency Summit. Stephen Kaiser/Staff
By
Natalie Alms
A provision preventing states from enforcing AI regulations did not make it into the final reconciliation law, but advocates are still pushing for its passage.
A bar on states enforcing new laws or regulations on artificial intelligence for 10 years didn’t make it into Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ but some lawmakers aren’t giving up on it yet.
“Some representatives say that it's good for states to have the right to make their own independent AI regulation,” Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said at GovExec's Government Efficiency Summit on Thursday. “Now, any of you who are developing IT or any sort of technical innovation realize that when you have 50 different states with 50 different regulations, you will have to have an entire department dedicated to knowing how to navigate that for interstate commerce.”
Asked if he was going to keep pushing on the AI moratorium, he said, “100%.”
“The unintended consequences of legislation are something we need to avoid,” he added. “AI has to advance. The only way you do that is through competition.”
A member of the House AI Task Force in the last Congress, McCormick previously argued for the moratorium as a way to prevent AI solutions from dying in “regulatory purgatory.”
And he isn’t the only person arguing for the moratorium even after the Senate removed the provision from the text that became the final law. The ALFA Institute, which former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched last fall, has continued to back the idea.
Critics of the ban say that it would prevent states from addressing AI harms. It also got blowback from some Republican governors as well as state attorneys general.
“We cannot support a provision that takes away states’ powers to protect our citizens. Let states function as the laboratories of democracy they were intended to be and allow state leaders to protect our people,” a group of 17 Republican governors wrote in late June.