WASHINGTON, D.C. - This week, Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, joined Fox Business' "The Bottom Line" to discuss AI policy, data centers, and the Ratepayer Protection Act.
Chairman Guthrie on The Ratepayer Protection Act and data centers:
"Well, so here's the issue, we're competing with China, so a lot of people are focused on
data centers, and that's important, but we've been talking to stakeholders, and we have to beat
China to control the information that flows around the world.
"Either our values are going to control it or Chinese totalitarian values are going to control it.
"In order to win the AI battle, we have to have access to data in the data centers. So we've talked to stakeholders that do AI, but the most important stakeholders to us are our constituents. We don't want them to have to foot the bill.
"And so what we do is direct federal resources to help states put in place their Ratepayer Protection Pledge, so it's not a federal government one size fits all.
"But there's been these calls for moratoriums. You just said you had New York State on earlier … They've also passed a moratorium, which just isn't helpful.
"We're about six months ahead of China and AI, people predict. If we had a year moratorium, let's say that's nationwide, and we get behind China, we'll never catch up.
"And it'll just continue to, it will continue China's march to be a superpower that we have to defend."
Chairman Guthrie on New York's data center moratorium:
"We have a big [data center] coming to Kentucky, but we need, what we're trying to do is, at the federal level, help states implement their Rate Payer Protection Pledges at the state level.
"So we're not sending a federal statute out, we're assisting states to do so. And you're right, Kathy Hochul, Governor Hochul, served in Congress with me when she was here. When she signed the executive order for the moratorium, she said, 'well, our energy rates are already too high, so why add data loads on?'
"Well, the reason they're too high is exactly what Secretary Burgum said, but the other thing is, I went to school in New York, I actually went to West Point back in the day, and if you get above New York City, there's a lot of communities that have struggled. It's the old kind of Great Lakes Rust Belt in some of those areas. And I'm not a New Yorker, and let those businesses come to my area, we welcome that, but it's really not fair to people in those communities that are economically disadvantaged to say if this is the industry of the future, which many people predict it will be, just think the state of New York has decided to take itself out of the ballgame.
"But Kentucky, we have local communities that decided not to participate in data centers. I think that's their right to do so. But as a state, we have communities, one in my district is getting a $19 billion, 20-year investment for Anthropic it's going to completely change economically that community. The school system in that community will be the wealthiest school system per capita in the Commonwealth. And I predict that other county officials in other states are going to be looking at that area to say, 'Wow, how can we participate in that as well?' But we don't want the local citizens footing the bill. We want the data centers doing that."
Chairman Guthrie on economic advantages of data centers
"Well, the county executive, Judge Robertson, in that area is a good friend of mine, and he's talking about doing exactly what you say. There's probably going to be a billion dollars' worth of property value, not property tax revenue, of property value. It'll almost double the value of the property in that community. So they are looking at opportunities to give refunds back.
"They're putting it in an old aluminum smelter site, and there's also a 3% utility tax, so think of taking about a gigawatt of power, but the smelter was there, and I remember asking him, 'Is this replacing revenue you already had?' He goes, 'Oh, no, look how industrial America, you know, you go to Frankfort, Governor Beshear, and you get a tax break. They weren't paying these taxes.'
"So our old industrial America's model is you go to the state, you get tax breaks, you get everything abated, and we'll keep the jobs here as long as you keep giving us the tax breaks. The smelter left, the data centers come, and it's going to pay its full bill.
"And if data centers don't pay its full bill, I would tell communities not to bring them in because there are enough businesses that need the data centers that are willing to pay what is fair, and the communities are going to, instead of paying, the communities are going to actually benefit.