Senate Democrats say data center tax breaks are costing billions

Three Senate Democrats want to know who is really paying for the AI construction boom. Their answer: state and local governments, which they estimate have given up billions in tax revenue to bring data centers to town. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Richard Blumenthal released the report on October 9, 2026. It is titled Power and Profits: How the AI Data Center Boom Costs Households and Communities. What the senators found The central finding is that tax breaks for building data centers have drained billions from public budgets, according to the report’s estimate. That money did not disappear. It stayed with the companies doing the building. The investigation focused on seven firms: Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix. According to the report, these companies actively pursue sales tax exemptions and other subsidies from state and local governments. What they did not provide, the senators say, was comprehensive data on job creation to justify those incentives. The report also flags a transparency problem. Many of the companies ask local authorities to sign nondisclosure agreements, which limits how much the public...