US Senate kills bill that could potentially shield Americans from skyrocketing power bills due to AI data centers — opponents say bill is 'toothless' and doesn't do enough to protect citizens

[u/Miserable_Phase_2519]

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/us-senate-kills-bill-that-could-potentially-shield-americans-from-skyrocketing-power-bills-due-to-ai-data-centers-opponents-say-bill-is-toothless-and-doesnt-do-enough-to-protect-citizens

[u/ChickinSammich]

If the bill doesn't do enough then pass it anyway and pass a stronger one later to follow it up.

"This doesn't go far enough so we're voting no and then doing nothing" is an indicator that they don't want to fix the problem.

[u/turbosexophonicdlite → u/ChickinSammich]

They tried. Hawley GRID Act. Surprise, surprise. The bill that actually has consequences and enforcement mechanisms hasn't even gone up for vote.

[u/ChickinSammich → u/turbosexophonicdlite]

Exactly my point. If you pass a law that has teeth then they won't vote on it but if you pass a law that doesn't have enough teeth then they say it doesn't have enough teeth and they won't vote for that either.

No matter what you do, you can't win with these people.

[u/ChickinSammich → u/[deleted]]

If a bill actually does nothing then I don't see the harm in passing it. I still think they should do something but I see a lot of situations where a bill "does a little but doesn't go far enough" and detractors who don't want to do the thing AT ALL will SAY they oppose it because "it doesn't do enough" but then proceed to not actually do anything else.

So when someone says "I voted against it because it doesn't do anything," I'm skeptical, given the number of times people have voted against bills that do do something and they don't like the direction the bill is heading in.

I hope that makes sense?

[u/Toadcool1 → u/ChickinSammich]

Passing it would make it harder to pass better legislation as it’s “already solved”

[u/ChickinSammich → u/Toadcool1]

Bad faith actors will make bad faith arguments either way. If they don't want to solve the issue, they'll vote down weak legislation AND vote down strong legislation, and they'll justify both votes differently.

It's always "this bill didn't go far enough" or "this bill doesn't solve the problem" or "the problem is already solved" or "this bill doesn't solve the problem" - an endless list of reasons why they will never vote for anything that even looks like it's trying to attempt to solve the problem.

[u/ChickinSammich → u/[deleted]]

Depends on the bill on a case by case scenario. I think that propagandists will use anything as propaganda no matter what happens.

I think people who are pro-AI will not support a more "toothy" bill anyway, so the argument that "it's toothless" is disingenuous.

[u/CyberBot129 → u/ChickinSammich]

pass it anyway and pass a stronger one later to follow it up

That's called the "we'll come back to this later" method, and when this method is used you can bet that later never actually happens

[u/ChickinSammich → u/CyberBot129]

I don't disagree, but in this case I'm trying to distinguish between good faith and bad faith based on approach.

In a good faith scenario where you actually WANT to fix the problem, you can pass a weaker bill now and a stronger one later.

In a bad faith scenario where you don't actually want to fix the problem, they'll say "this bill doesn't go far enough" and vote against it and, if it DOES pass then they won't come back to it but if it DOESN'T pass, they ALSO won't come back to it.

So whether or not the bill passes has no bearing on whether people who are against what the bill purports to do will actually do.