Senator Katie Britt wants Congress to stop treating a handshake deal like it’s a binding contract. In a September 4 interview, the Alabama Republican called on lawmakers to turn President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary commitment from tech giants to cover the full costs of their data centers’ electricity and grid infrastructure, into federal law.
The logic is straightforward: data centers are vacuuming up power at an extraordinary rate to feed the AI boom, and someone has to pay for the grid upgrades. Britt’s argument is that “someone” should be Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, not the family in Birmingham paying their monthly electric bill.
From pledge to legislation
Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge launched on March 4, 2026, with seven major AI companies signing on. By July 23, it had ballooned to 187 organizations and 23 governors, collectively covering roughly 80% of US power delivery.
The legislative vehicle already exists. The Ratepayer Protection Act, designated H.R. 9340, cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in July with a 52-0 vote. Britt is now pushing the Senate to match that momentum and get the bill to the president’s desk.
The water problem nobody talks about
Electricity isn’t the only resource data centers devour. A single large facility can consume up to 5 million gallons of water daily for cooling, roughly equivalent to the water needs of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 residents.
Britt has been working that angle too. She co-sponsored the Advancing Water Reuse Act, designated S. 3585, alongside Democratic Senator Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico. The bill would create a 30% tax credit for water recycling systems at data centers, incentivizing operators to recirculate cooling water rather than drawing fresh supplies.
The China factor
Britt framed the urgency partly through the lens of geopolitical competition. China’s AI infrastructure buildout has been accelerating, and the senator argued that the US cannot afford regulatory uncertainty to slow its own data center expansion. The pitch to fellow lawmakers is essentially: we can protect ratepayers and build fast, but only if the rules are clear and codified.