Congress hasn’t passed annual funding bills on time since 1997, and ongoing partisan gridlock—and President Trump’s push for Republicans to go it alone—has degraded the normal budget process, risking funding for popular federal programs Americans rely on.
Congress is rushing to regulate AI, but the new push appears at risk of getting tangled in the same political fights that have paralyzed previous attempts to regulate technology. The past several years saw consensus on other major tech issues, but each of those efforts ultimately collapsed, in part due to partisan squabbling over their impact on social media. A return to the politics of those earlier tech disputes will make it harder for the two parties to come together on AI policy. And even if they can stay united, lawmakers will likely need to look beyond censorship, disinformation, political bias or other issues raised by social media if they want to produce meaningful AI rules.