House Republican Straight Up Claims Data Centers Will ‘Keep Your Electricity Rate Low’: ‘Amazing Thing’

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) delivered a sweeping sales pitch for data centers Wednesday, claiming the facilities would keep residents’ electricity bills down and help pay for schools, roads, and even property taxes.

The congressman made the claims during an appearance on Newsmax’s Wake Up America in a bid to counter growing political and grassroots opposition to the rapid expansion of data centers across the U.S.

“If you don’t want a data center, that’s fine, don’t have one, but just realize they’re not going to use your water, they’re going to keep your electricity rate low, they’re going to pay for your teachers your schools your roads, most likely your property taxes, you’re gonna have more jobs,” McCormick said.

“It’s going to be an amazing thing to have in your neighborhood,” he insisted.

McCormick added that an older-style data center already operates in his area with little apparent disruption: “You wouldn’t even know it was there. It doesn’t have heat, it doesn’t have any noise but if you don’t want one that’s fine, self-determination, but realize it can pay for a lot of things and be very beneficial to your community.”

His comments come as the expansion of massive facilities needed to support artificial intelligence has become an increasingly contentious local political issue and backlash mounts.

More than 1,300 data centers are currently operating in the U.S., with another 2,231 projects planned or under development, according to market intelligence firm Cleanview figures cited by CBS News.

Opposition groups disrupted at least 45 proposed developments across 27 states during the second quarter of 2026, representing projects valued at $68 billion. Thirty states have introduced or adopted measures aimed at addressing concerns surrounding the facilities, including their impact on electricity costs.

Research published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s VoxEU on September 24 also challenges McCormick’s assertion that data centers will necessarily keep electricity rates low.

Researchers examining roughly 1,200 U.S. utility territories found that additional data centers were associated with higher electricity prices, with households experiencing larger increases than commercial or industrial customers.

Their estimates found one additional data center increased average residential prices by 0.182 cents per kilowatt-hour, while the addition of ten facilities was associated with residential prices around 13% higher relative to the post-AI average. An average hyperscale facility was estimated to raise prices by roughly 4%.

The researchers cautioned that the effect varies substantially. Residential increases were close to zero in areas served by nonprofit utilities and were smaller where utilities already had surplus energy capacity.

Watch above via Newsmax.

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