Marjorie Taylor Greene under fire after admitting she missed AI provision in GOP tax bill
WASHINGTON - Conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, is facing backlash from Democrats after saying she wouldn’t have voted in favor of President Donald Trump’s tax and domestic policy bill if she’d known about the artificial intelligence provision included in it.
The bill, which passed by a party line vote in the House on May 22, includes a provision that prohibits states from enforcing any law or regulation “limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce” for a ten year period.
“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years,” Greene wrote on X. “I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there. We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous.”
Democratic lawmakers quickly fired back at Greene.
“I read the AI provision, that’s one reason I voted no on the GOP’s big, ugly bill,” California Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu wrote on X.
“PRO TIP: It’s helpful to read stuff before voting on it,” he added.
Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan had more blistering words for his colleague across the aisle, taking aim at Greene for missing the provision. “You should have done your job while it was written. You didn’t. You own that vote, @RepMTG,” he wrote on X.
Greene urged the Senate to strip the provision.
The provision has raised alarms from other groups as well. On June 3, over 200 state lawmakers wrote a letter addressed to the House and Senate asking them to reject the provision and “work toward the enactment, rather than the erasure, of thoughtful AI policy solutions.”