Senator Jon Husted Rips Schumer Over Data Center Bill: “The Fraud Here Is What Chuck Is Trying to Perpetuate”

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Guy Benson: Now it’s time for another Guy Benson Show “Benson Bite,” where we bring you the day’s most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit GuyBensonShow.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Joining us now is the junior U.S. senator from the great state of Ohio, Jon Husted, a Republican. Senator, welcome back to the show. Great to be with you.

I want to talk about policy first and then get to some politics. There is a bill that you have written on this issue and this firestorm around data centers. I know the opposition is trying to make a lot of hay over this because, as the polling suggests, it’s a good issue for them. You’re trying to address some of those concerns. It actually had quite a lot of support among House Democrats in addition to Republicans, but Chuck Schumer seems determined to stop it because maybe it might actually solve something and deprive them of a political issue.

Tell us about what you’ve done and why you think the Democrats in the upper chamber are at least pretending to be against it.

Senator Jon Husted: Well, it’s called the Ratepayer Protection Act, and it would require data centers to pay for their own infrastructure and electricity, including generation and transmission lines. All of those things would be paid for by the data centers. The cost would not be spread to the ratepayers, and it would protect American citizens from higher energy prices due to data centers.

My bill passed the House–the exact version of it–by a vote of 417 to 3. Nothing passes 417 to 3.

We brought it over here to the Senate and tried to get it passed by unanimous consent. The Democrats blocked it. So now we’re going to try again to get a roll-call vote on this, and hopefully get it signed into law so that we can prove to the American people we’re listening to them, that we care about affordability, and we’re going to stop their electric prices from going up.

But Chuck Schumer has said that he didn’t like it, and I think he called it a fraud.

Guy Benson: Yeah, he called it a fraud. But as you said, it passed 417 to 3 in the House.

Senator Jon Husted: Yeah. Hakeem Jeffries voted for it. AOC voted for it. Two hundred and six House Democrats voted for it.

The fraud here is what Chuck Schumer is trying to perpetuate on the American people: that they actually care about affordability. Because they don’t if they block this bill.

Guy Benson: Yeah, which they’re doing, at least so far. Do you have a commitment from Leader Thune to get a vote on this, to force this?

Senator Jon Husted: Yeah, we talked about it earlier today. We’re going to vote on it next week, our final week before the election. We’re going to be able to say to the American people, “We’re fighting to lower your electricity prices.”

We’ll see if the Democrats want to make it a bipartisan victory or if they want to own the defeat.

Guy Benson: Okay. Another issue that I know that you’ve been trying to tackle: There were a few horrible tragedies in the span of less than a week and a half. Three Ohioans died on the roads, sadly, at the hands of illegal immigrants who don’t have a right to be here at all. These are tragedies, and you were trying to do something about it. What’s that?

Senator Jon Husted: Yeah. Three people in Ohio died in nine days at the hands of an illegal immigrant driver. One of those had a driver’s license issued by the state of Connecticut.

What we’ve discovered is that 19 states and the District of Columbia give driver’s licenses to people who are in this country illegally.

I know that most people find that astonishing, but that’s the plan from the sanctuary blue states. They open the borders, they give people things like driver’s licenses, and sadly and tragically, one of those people from Connecticut came to Ohio and killed someone in Ohio.

So I have legislation that would ban highway funding from going to states that issue driver’s licenses to people who are in this country illegally.

I think it’s pretty common sense. If you’re going to endanger Americans on the roadways through your actions, then we’re going to cut off your highway funds.

Guy Benson: I just–because some people say, “Oh, well, people who are here illegally, and they’re not committing other crimes, they need to get around. You want them in the system,” you know, that kind of thing.

But sorry, to me, the other side of that same argument is: If we know that you’re here illegally, we should not be giving you formalized forms of American identification.

If you’re here illegally, if we’re in the process of anything, it should be to ask you to leave and come back through the correct process.

I’ve never understood it. There are a few things on the immigration debate that I have never understood, and this is one of them. And yet it’s fairly mainstream on the left, right? As you said, 40% of our states are doing this.

Senator Jon Husted: And people are dying.

The Democrats always seem to care more about people who are in this country illegally than they do American citizens.

In this particular case, it endangers people on our roadways. In many cases, they don’t even know how to read the traffic signs, and they’re giving them driver’s licenses.

This has tragic consequences. I mean, as a public official, I think I have an obligation to stand up for the safety of American citizens versus people who are in this country illegally and hold sanctuary states that do this kind of stuff accountable in some way if they won’t fix the problem on their own.

Guy Benson: No, our official processes should be used to get people who are not here legally to leave, not to give them all sorts of goodies or incentives to stay or more to come.

I know that might sound naive, but I think it’s actually the basis for a rational society. And this is just one component of that.

Another issue that I want to ask you about before we get to your race and the politics of everything–and if we have time later in the show, we’ve got your colleague from West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito. She’ll be on the show as well. I know she’s involved in this.

You are in a sports-crazy state, and I would say in particular a college-sports-crazy state. Whether it’s the Buckeyes or Bobcats or Bearcats or Zips–I can go on. Did I miss anyone? RedHawks? There’s a bunch of MAC teams in Ohio. A lot of people are very invested in the future of college sports, and I’m one of them. I’m a huge college sports fan.

I do agree that some of this, in terms of NIL and the transfer portal, has just spun completely beyond any recognition of what college sports used to be. I thought you had to modernize in some ways, but I think the pendulum has swung wildly out of whack in the other direction.

I’m not 100% sure if this is something for the federal government to get involved in, but a lot of people think that is the case, including many people with deep roots in college sports.

What do you make of this, and what do you think of the emerging Protect College Sports Act debate?

Senator Jon Husted: So the colleges, whether they’re big ones or small ones, have said, “You’ve got to do something.” And at least the colleges in Ohio that have talked to me about it have all said they like this bill. They want us to get it done.

And I believe we will get it. It’s going to be better than what exists now, but there are some issues that have been left unresolved.

One that I’m very concerned about is why I have my TEAM USA Act. It’s the number of non-American citizens who are populating these college rosters and taking scholarships and roster spots away from American citizens.

There are some Olympic sports and other sports–tennis, golf, hockey, soccer–where the majority or all of the student-athletes at these colleges are from another country. And they’re taking up roster spots for American citizens.

So my bill would cap it at 20%. We’re not saying ban it. We’re saying, look, particularly as this becomes more lucrative because Olympic-sport athletes are now going to get money, it’s an incentive for people from other countries, professional athletes from other countries, to come to America and use our college sports system to make money and train for their country to go to the Olympics or do whatever.

I’m not for banning it, but we’ve got to look out for American student-athletes first. If you’re asking the federal government to get involved with this, we ought to look out for American student-athletes.

And so I’m concerned about this.

Guy Benson: All right, so you’re in this tough election cycle. You’re not alone. There are a lot of Republicans who are nervous. You’ve seen the polls. I’ve seen polls. Many of them now show that you are trailing in your race to the former Democratic senator from your state, Sherrod Brown, who was defeated by the people of Ohio after a very long career in politics. They were like, “All right, enough. You’ve caused enough of the problems here, Sherrod Brown. As a liberal Democrat, you’re out.”

In a state that has gotten redder over the last decade, let’s say, he’s making a comeback and he’s trying to sort of reinvent himself. He is playing into a lot of the dissatisfaction out there right now with the party in power–your party–and he is leading in a number of these polls.

What are you seeing in your polling? What are you seeing on the ground? How do you win this race in November?

Senator Jon Husted: Well, Sherrod Brown has been in office in Ohio for over 50 years.

If you don’t like the policies regarding your higher healthcare costs, your higher electricity costs, things like that, those are his policies. These are the things that he enacted.

Voting for a lot of the radical left-wing climate policies, he closed 23 power plants in Ohio. We used to be a net exporter of electricity. Now we’re a net importer, and it’s all because of him.

And he drove up the costs of so many things. He was for amnesty for 11 million people in this country illegally, gave them your Social Security payments, gave COVID checks, gave free healthcare to people who are not from this country.

And as Ohioans are remembering this about him during his 50 years in public office, they are going to say no to Sherrod Brown once again.

They defeated him two years ago against Bernie Moreno. We will ultimately defeat him this year.

Yeah, polls are close. One came out today that showed us tied. But look, this is September. I’m worried about November.

And once we run the campaign and remind people about why they fired him two years ago, I am confident that we will win this election.

Guy Benson: There is, though, a lot of frustration about the way things are going. Republicans said, “Hey, elect us and we’ll fix a lot of the problems that were caused by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Sherrod Brown.”

And a lot of voters are saying, “Well, I don’t feel like the problems are getting better.”

How do you respond to that? Because you can point backward at him, and I think that’s a completely fair hit. I think he deserves to stay retired.

But you also have to convince people who are giving you and your party a shot–who are dissatisfied–a sense that actually things are going to get better for them. And they’re not feeling it, many of them, right now.

What’s the message to those people?

Senator Jon Husted: Well, in Ohio, we have the most jobs we’ve ever had in the history of our state and the lowest unemployment rate we’ve ever had in the history of our state.

So the growth side of things is going well in Ohio in terms of jobs and low unemployment rates.

Costs are still too high for people, but remember, they went up to 9% under Joe Biden. We’re trying to bring them down with food, fuel, and electricity.

Look, if you ask, “What are we doing about it?” That’s what my Ratepayer Protection Act is about. It’s about making data centers pay their own way, lowering electricity costs for residents, and I’m leading on it.

He was in Congress for 32 years. What did he do? He did nothing. He celebrated the expansion of data centers when he was in the Senate, did nothing to make them accountable for paying their own way. And now Democrats are trying to block me after I’ve been here for 18 months and I’m getting something done on it.

So look, the Democrats have been very obstructionist on fuel. The voters know we’re for lower gas prices. We’re the party of “drill, baby, drill.” They’re the party of killing the Keystone pipeline. They don’t want more production. They don’t want supply to meet demand. They want higher prices.

That’s part of their radical policy agenda. It’s not an exaggeration.

Guy Benson: I’m glad you’re making this point. Sorry, I just want to jump in because it’s such an important point. I want to underscore it real quick.

They are using and exploiting higher gas prices and diesel prices, which are a painful problem. I’m not disputing that. But they are jumping in to point at you guys and Donald Trump and say, “Look at this horrible thing.”

But outside of that context to win an election, their actual policy is higher gas prices. That is their stated goal: to ruin fossil fuels and move on from them. They should be welcoming higher gas prices. That’s what they want. They want people to use–

Senator Jon Husted: Less of everything. And they’ve always wanted higher prices so that people would convert to electric cars and do the other things that they want.

So look, they can be for all those policies, but the voters know Republicans have been fighting for more exploration for oil and gas, building pipelines so that you can get lower-priced natural gas and gasoline for your cars.

Republicans have been fighting for those policies.

I mean, they used to mock us. They used to mock us for “drill, baby, drill.” Remember this? They used to mock us for wanting to have coal-fired power plants or gas-fired power plants so that we could have enough energy to meet the demand.

That’s who they really are.

And we’re going to fight to show the voters that we care, that we’re going to get this done. We’re creating jobs, we have low unemployment, but we’ve got to get the prices down.

Guy Benson: Senator Jon Husted of Ohio is running this year in a very important race. The math for the Democrats gets really hard if they can’t win his race. They’re trying, and he’s here explaining why he’s fighting back.

It’s a very tight contest. That’s why people in the Buckeye State have to pay attention and pay attention to the choice in this race.

Senator, appreciate your time here on the Guy Benson Show today.

Senator Jon Husted: Great to be with you.