Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) halted passage of a proposal that had passed the House by an overwhelming margin.
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Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) blocked passage Thursday of a bill meant to lower electricity prices, denying Republicans a legislative victory less than seven weeks ahead of the midterm elections.
The bill, the Ratepayer Protection Act, would not have directly limited prices on its own. Instead it encouraged state utility regulators to consider steps to protect consumers from rising electricity prices due to the boom in construction of data centers. It passed the House Wednesday on a 417-3 vote.
Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) sought unanimous consent to pass the bill, and described it as “the most meaningful bipartisan step Congress could take to protect the American people from higher prices for electricity.”
Heinrich said he agreed that Congress needed to take action on rising costs linked to data centers, but argued that Husted’s bill did not go far enough to force data centers to pay for upgrades to the electric grid and conserve water.
“We’re not going to get there with the bill that the senator from Ohio has proposed,” Heinrich said.
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Heinrich blocked passage of Husted’s bill and tried to pass his own data center legislation by unanimous consent. He was blocked by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio).
Moreno cast Heinrich’s objection as a way to hurt Husted in his race against former senator Sherrod Brown (D), whose campaign has run million of dollars of ads attacking Husted on data centers. Polling has found the centers to be broadly unpopular.
Heinrich’s objection represented another “Democrat obstruction, so they can just put up another TV ad to say that electricity prices are high, so that they can win an election,” Moreno said on the Senate floor.
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