Editors at the Washington Examiner offer a suggestion for Democrats interested in rebuilding the party’s brand.
If the Democatric Party is serious about rebuilding its working-class brand in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide reelection, it should prove that it can be the party that builds things again. Namely, by supporting bipartisan permitting reform in the lame-duck Congress.
Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have been working in conjunction with House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) for months on the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024. This legislation is designed to ease the construction of much-needed energy infrastructure.
The Senate version of the bill, which passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a 15-4 bipartisan basis, would create a 150-day statute of limitations for all legal challenges to any energy infrastructure project and set a 180-day deadline for federal agency action when a project is challenged in court. The bill also allows federal regulators to coordinate energy transmission projects across state lines, encourages the development of geothermal energy, and repeals President Joe Biden’s ban on liquefied natural gas exports.
Barrasso and Westerman want to go even further, adding major reform of the National Environmental Policy Act to the deal. That includes limiting the scope of environmental reviews, stricter standards for determining who can sue to stop an infrastructure project pursuant to the act, and new limits on what effects from climate change can be considered during the permitting process.
Ideally, the NEPA would be repealed entirely as it has repeatedly been used by environmental extremists to shut down construction projects since its inception in 1970. After the Supreme Court sided with activists in stopping construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee, it took a special act of Congress to get the project restarted.
