Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has introduced an important new artificial intelligence (AI) policy framework to guide congressional policymaking. He has also floated a new bill that proposes “regulatory sandboxes” as a method of encouraging creative policy change in areas where new AI innovations might be constrained by existing regulations or bureaucratic processes.

His proposed “Legislative Framework for American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” includes five pillars for congressional action:

1. Unleash American innovation and long-term growth
2. Protect free speech in the age of AI
3. Prevent a patchwork of burdensome AI regulation
4. Stop nefarious uses of AI against Americans
5. Defend human value and dignity

Sen. Cruz said “the United States should adopt a light-touch regulatory approach” based on these principles to speed-up development of American AI systems and ensure that China does not achieve its goal of becoming the global leader in AI development. This framework is not a formal bill, but is meant to encourage forthcoming AI policy action by Congress.

The first part of the Cruz AI plan to be rolled out formally is the “Strengthening Artificial intelligence Normalization and Diffusion By Oversight and eXperimentation,” or “SANDBOX Act.” If passed, this would give the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the White House the ability to work with AI deployers and developers to modify or waive regulations that could impede their work.

Under the bill, OSTP would coordinate with federal agencies to evaluate requests for 2-year waivers under the sandbox programs with the possibility of extensions being granted upon request. The bill also requires the OSTP to report back to Congress and identify what waivers were granted and provide an evaluation of their effectiveness. Sen. Cruz hopes the process will help “better inform future policy decisions and the regulatory structure applicable to AI” and “encourage American ingenuity, improve transparency in lawmaking, and ultimately lead to safe, long-term AI usage domestically.”

Sen. Cruz introduced his new AI policy framework and new sandbox bill at a Wednesday hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee where OSTP director Michael Kratsios testified and discussed the importance of the Trump administration’s new “AI Action Plan,” a major policy strategy document the White House released in July.  The Cruz bill compliments the Trump administration’s vision for a “try-first” approach to AI policy that allows American AI innovation and investment to flourish and meet the challenge that China poses to American leadership and values on this front.

Overcoming Ossified “Set-It-And-Forget-It” Regulation

Sen. Cruz’s bill is important because it addresses a somewhat forgotten element of AI policy. The AI policy debate thus far has primarily focused on new types of regulation for AI systems and applications. There are, however, many laws and regulations already on the books that cover—or could come to cover—algorithmic applications. But are those rules right for the AI age? Are they fit for purpose, or will they just hold back important innovations without having much corresponding benefit?

Once implemented, regulations often prove hard to update or eliminate to be consistent with new technological and marketplace realities. This leads to what the World Economic Forum famously referred to as a “regulate-and-forget” approach to technological governance, or what others have labelled a “build-and-freeze model” of policymaking.

For rules to be effective, however, they need to keep pace with changing circumstances. Unfortunately, older rules are rarely revisited or revised, even after new social, economic, and technological realities render them obsolete or ineffective. A 2017 survey of U.S. Code of Regulations by Deloitte revealed that 68 percent of federal regulations were never updated and that 17 percent have only been updated once. This results in chronic regulatory accumulation, which has serious costs for the economy and consumers. When red tape grows without constraint and becomes untethered from modern marketplace realities, it can undermine innovation and investment, undermine entrepreneurship and competition, raise costs to consumers, limit worker opportunities, and undermine long-term economic growth. Meanwhile, the growing complexity of some government systems result in “regulatory overload,” which can contradict the well-intentioned safety goals behind many rules.

Before he served as Colorado Attorney General, Phil Weiser wrote that “[a] core failing of today’s administrative state. . . is the lack of imagination as to how agencies should operate.” He called for more “entrepreneurial administration” to “develop experimental regulatory strategies” that could also ensure that “legislative bodies have the opportunity to evaluate regulatory innovations in practice before deciding whether to embrace, revise, reject, or merely tolerate them.”

Sen. Cruz’s AI sandbox bill is a good example of that sort of entrepreneurial administration and “experimental regulatory strategies.” Just as trial-and-error improves markets, it can improve public policy. Policies for complex and fast-moving technologies must not be set in stone if America hopes to remain on the cutting edge of new sectors. Many new AI applications in healthcare, transportation, and financial services could offer the public important new life-enriching services. But, those innovations could also be immediately confronted by archaic rules that block those benefits by standing in the way of marketplace experimentation. Sen. Cruz’s bill can help address this problem.

The Cruz AI Policy Vision Takes Shape

With the release of his new AI legislative framework and the SANDBOX Act, Sen. Cruz’s vision for AI policy is now clearer. Sen. Cruz has previously identified the importance of America leading the world on AI innovation and the particular need to counter China’s efforts to become a global leader on this front. In a March speech at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s “Compute Summit,” he argued, “if we don’t innovate, we’ll lose. And if China dominates AI for the world, that is a profoundly bad outcome for America and the rest of the world.”

“It is far better for America to lead and innovate” to stay ahead of China, Sen. Cruz said, and to do so, America should follow the same smart policy model we adopted for the Internet, which helped the nation trounce Europe, which once represented major competition on the digital front. The European Union (E.U.) adopted a “heavy-handed prior approval regulatory approach” that decimated innovation across the European continent, Cruz noted, while America benefited from tech and energy-led technological revolution, both spurred by smarter policy choices. Thus, “putting government in charge of innovation in AI would almost ensure America loses the race to AI,” which would be “catastrophic.”

In that March address, Sen. Cruz also correctly explained how “we have tools in place to go after misuse [and] criminal conduct” with the many existing consumer protection regulations already on the books. He also argued that any new AI-related regulations should be narrowly-tailored, as opposed to a “broad-brush regulatory approach that would empower government to silence and stifle innovation.” Consistent with his call for tailored AI policies, Sen. Cruz co-sponsored the “TAKE IT DOWN Act,” a bill targeting the nonconsensual online publication of intimate visual depictions of individuals, whether authentic or computer-generated. The bill passed through Congress with widespread support and was signed into law by President Trump on May 19th.

A National Framework & Preemption Are Essential

Finally, Sen. Cruz has also acknowledged the importance of a national policy framework to address the rapid proliferation of AI legislative proposals happening across the nation. Over 1,000 AI-related bills were introduced in the first half of 2025, and fully one-quarter of them were floated in four major progressive states—California, New York, Colorado, and Illinois—where lawmakers are looking to aggressively regulate AI systems, but in many different ways.

Earlier this summer, Sen. Cruz made an effort to push through his own version of the House-passed 10-year moratorium on state AI-specific regulatory enactments. “A single state should not have the power to set AI rules for the entire country,” Cruz said when announcing his version of the moratorium proposal. “Instead, the U.S. should take steps to prevent an unworkable patchwork of disparate and conflicting state AI laws and to encourage states to adopt commonsense tech-neutral policies.” This is in line with President Trump’s call for a national AI policy framework. During a speech announcing the AI Action Plan in July, Trump told the audience, “We need one commonsense federal standard that supersedes all states.”

When the moratorium proposals came under fire from some of his Senate colleagues, Cruz worked with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to create a compromise that would have shortened the AI moratorium length to five years and provided further clarification on what was exempt from the proposal. Unfortunately, that compromise fell apart quickly after Sen. Blackburn walked away from the deal and the original moratorium proposal was ultimately defeated on the Senate floor.

Nonetheless, Cruz has continued to identify the importance of a “light-touch” national policy framework for AI policy and the third pillar of his new legislative framework stresses the need to “clarify federal standards to prevent burdensome state AI regulations.” At Wednesday’s hearing where Sen. Cruz launched his framework, OSTP head Kratsios also reiterated that, “a patchwork of state regulations is anti-innovation” and it would particularly hurt smaller firms that cannot handle the compliance costs associated with hundreds of confusing, contradictory rules.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for Winning the AI Future

Taken together, Sen. Cruz’s new AI policy framework and the Trump administration’s recent AI Action Plan point the way forward for Congress. It is essential that federal lawmakers take steps promptly to formulate a national policy framework instead of letting European Union lawmakers or a handful of activist-minded states dictate AI policy for America. The principles and strategies laid out in the Cruz framework and Trump AI Action Plan offer lawmakers a constructive blueprint to help ensure America wins the AI future.