By the Founders, Department of Technology | San Diego, California | November 13, 2026
A new Congress has 100 days to show it can govern the technology buildout instead of reacting to it. Here is a practical agenda that members of either party can sign onto.
In our last piece, we described five mistakes the previous Congress made on data centers and AI. This one is the to-do list. We built it from items that already have bipartisan footprints, because the fastest agenda is one that members have already voted for, sponsored or said they support. One timing note: bills that do not become law expire when a Congress ends, so even measures that passed one chamber, like the Ratepayer Protection Act, have to be introduced again.
1. Days 1 to 30: Hold one set of hearings on the whole picture
Today the pieces of this problem sit in different committees. Energy committees see the grid. Commerce committees see competitiveness. Finance and tax committees see revenue. Each hears from its own witnesses, and nobody hears the tradeoffs.
Hold a joint hearing series with the same witnesses in the same room: grid operators, state utility regulators, economists, county officials and workers. The evidence on each risk is already strong enough to start. In the largest U.S. grid market, wholesale power prices rose almost 76 percent in a year and the market monitor called the effects irreversible. At the same time, BloombergNEF expects China to add more than six times as much generating capacity as the United States over five years. Members should hear both facts at once.
2. Days 1 to 45: Reintroduce ratepayer protection and settle the real disagreement
The Ratepayer Protection Act cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee 52 to 0, passed the House 417 to 3, and then failed a Senate procedural vote 57 to 43 that needed 60. The two sides disagreed about one question: whether states should merely be required to consider making large data centers pay for the grid upgrades built to serve them, or whether the cost allocation should be mandatory, as in the Democratic GRID Savings Act.
Both positions have a principled basis. Utility regulation has long been a state responsibility, and voluntary pledges have a mixed record. We suggest negotiators look for a middle design: a mandatory core for the very largest new loads, with states keeping flexibility over how to implement it. That is our suggestion, not a settled answer, and the details matter. The point is to have the argument in February rather than the weeks before an election.
3. Days 30 to 60: Open the deals
Secret agreements are the issue where public frustration is highest and the policy fix is simplest. Bloomberg Law found that 25 of 31 proposed data center projects in Virginia involved nondisclosure agreements, and that Microsoft says it is working to end any active NDAs governments have signed. Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have introduced bills to ban such agreements, but only Delaware has passed a transparency measure through its legislature, according to MLex. A bipartisan group in Congress has now introduced a federal bill to ban NDAs that keep officials from discussing proposed data center projects, while protecting trade secrets.
Move that bill. And because Congress’s reach is strongest where federal assets are involved, require public disclosure of any data center deal that touches federal land, federal funds or federal permits.
4. Days 60 to 90: Ask the revenue question before the layoffs
We do not know how much AI will displace work, and forecasts vary widely. We do know how exposed the tax base is if it does. A RAND analysis found that 84 percent of federal revenue in 2024 came from individual and payroll taxes, and that losing high-paid white-collar jobs would hurt revenue disproportionately. New York City’s Comptroller has already modeled five AI scenarios for the city’s finances.
Ask the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office to publish scenario analyses of federal revenue under different displacement paths, and encourage states and counties to do the same. Planning for a range of outcomes is not predicting the worst one.
5. Days 90 to 100: Name an owner
Every item above would be easier to carry out, and harder to forget, if someone were accountable for them together. Begin by creating a standing joint committee with jurisdiction over the whole technology buildout. Then open the larger debate about a Department of Technology and elected technology leaders at the local, county, state and federal levels, including a Secretary of Technology.
Two rules for all 100 days
- No riders. Questions as large as federal preemption of state AI laws should not be decided inside a defense or budget bill. They need their own hearings and their own text.
- Settle the hard disagreements early. The last Congress’s one bipartisan success stalled because the central dispute surfaced a few weeks before Election Day.
The case against our case
A fair agenda includes the strongest objections.
- It is too much, too fast. Skeptics will say five items in 100 days is unrealistic, especially in a Senate that needs 60 votes for most bills. We would rather offer a full list and let members pick; the first two items are the most achievable.
- Congress has limited reach over local contracts. A federal NDA ban cannot easily dictate how a city signs agreements except through federal funding, permits or land. Developers also argue that confidentiality protects competitive information, and Microsoft has said the agreements were meant to protect sensitive information. The bill’s trade-secret carve-out is where this fight will be decided.
- Mandatory cost allocation could raise costs or slow building. Supporters of the optional approach worry that rigid federal standards could discourage investment at a moment when the country needs more capacity.
- Revenue scenarios are speculative. The same New York report acknowledges it is hard to connect today’s hiring trends to AI with certainty. We agree, which is why we ask for a range of scenarios and not a single forecast.
Start now
None of this requires a party to give up its principles. It requires members to decide that the question of who is accountable for the technology buildout is theirs to answer. We will keep publishing the evidence and we will tell you plainly when we think a proposal falls short. Our proposal is at department.technology/.
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