{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://escobar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3351", "Congresswoman Escobar Statement on Ratepayer Protection Act", "2026-09-16", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "House", "TX", "Veronica Escobar", "E000299", "escobar.house.gov", "escobar", "https://escobar.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27", "scraper", "Today, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) released the following statement on the Ratepayer Protection Act:\n\n\u201cAfter months of urging the Republican majority to allow the House to vote on data center regulation legislation, the only bill they are allowing to move forward is the Ratepayer Protection Act, which requires tech companies to pay for the energy generation and consumption of their data centers.\n\n\u201cWhile I voted in favor of this bill, it represents the absolute bare minimum that Congress should be doing. If this is as far as Republicans will go to protect American communities, it is a pathetic response to what is a top priority for communities like mine. I will continue to push Republicans to allow bills that fully protect our natural resources, air quality and pocketbooks and won\u2019t stop until we have the protections the American people deserve.\u201d\n\nCongresswoman Escobar supports a number of bills to regulate data centers, establish guardrails, and prioritize consumers:\n\nThe AI Data Center Site Selection Transparency Act\n\nThis bill would set requirements for new AI data centers, requiring that developers publicly disclose the location 180 days in advance, disclose impacts on energy and water, and restricting NDA agreements with public entities on data centers deals.\n\nThe Power for the People Act\n\nThis bill ensures data centers are fully paying for their energy costs and associated infrastructure, creates a system to manage data center interconnection to the grid, and provides resources to improve accurate data center load forecasting.\n\nThe Energy Bills Relief Act\n\nThis bill reinstates 2022 tax credits for home and system-wide energy improvements and ensures that facilities like data centers are paying for their own energy costs.\n\nLowering Utility Bills Act\n\nThis bill would amend the Federal Power Act and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to require investor-owned electric utilities and gas utilities and transmission providers to, when establishing or calculating a return on equity, establish or calculate the return on equity at the lowest return on equity in an established range of reasonableness, and for other purposes.\n\nResponsible Data Center Siting Act\n\nThis bill directs the Secretary of Energy to establish best practices for the siting of data centers.\n\nRatepayer Bill of Rights Act\n\nThis bill requires public disclosure of electricity and water use, infrastructure costs, rate impacts, public financial assistance, and related commitments associated with large data centers, and for other purposes.\n\nResponsible Data Center Siting Act\n\nThis bill directs the Secretary of Energy to establish best practices for the siting of data centers.", 1, "2026-09-17T09:52:05Z", "2026-09-17T09:53:00Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://escobar.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3351"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7240776903927326, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}