In a rare moment of near-unanimous agreement, the House of Representatives passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417 to 3, establishing that the vast infrastructure costs of powering large data centers belong to the companies that build them — not to the families and small businesses who share the grid. The bill amends foundational energy law to set a federal floor: any data center drawing 100 megawatts or more must absorb every dollar of the generation, transmission, and distribution upgrades its appetite demands. It is a quiet but consequential reckoning with a question the AI era has forced i