Lawmakers agree on need for permitting reform, but Trump's role hampers progress

Bloomberg News

The bipartisan momentum behind overhauling the federal infrastructure permitting process could stall if the Trump administration continues to kill clean energy projects, warned the top Democrat on the Senate environmental committee Wednesday.

"I want strong bipartisan permitting reform [but] there's a trust problem with the administration's behavior that needs to be solved," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, during a Wednesday hearing on the need to reform the federal permitting process for infrastructure and energy projects.

Whitehouse said Democrats have "paused" negotiations and that the "responsibility for resuscitating permitting reform lies now with the administration."

Both parties and infrastructure experts have long agreed that an unpredictable federal permitting process and litigation aimed at halting projects cause delays and drive up costs. Relatively new concerns about the U.S. lacking sufficient energy for artificial intelligence development and energy affordability are also driving momentum. But Whitehouse and other Democrats say Trump's "irrational" cancellation of already-permitted projects like offshore wind renders Congressional action meaningless.

"We find no fault with Senate Republicans," Whitehouse said. "This is not Democratic versus Republican, this is legislative versus executive [branch], an age-old drama," he said. "It makes no sense to pass bipartisan permitting reform that will be illegally butchered by a lawless executive branch."

Brendan Bechtel, CEO of the Bechtel Corporation and chair of the smart regulation committee at the Business Roundtable, told lawmakers the country's competitiveness is suffering as a result of a burdensome permitting process.

"Other countries are building infrastructure at speed and scale," Bechtel said. It takes "between four and five years for the average investment dollar to get through" the permitting process, and $1.5 trillion of potential infrastructure investment is "stalled in the queue," he said.

Reforming the federal permitting process has been named a top priority by the Senate EPW committee and by House lawmakers that are crafting the next surface transportation bill. The House of Representatives passed legislation in December to streamline and accelerate permitting. The  Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development, or SPEED, Act proposes the most significant changes to the National Environmental Policy Act since its passage 50 years ago.

"The House acted last month by passing bipartisan reforms to NEPA and the Clean Water Act. It is now time for the Senate to act," EPW Chair Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said during the hearing. "I have spent the last year listening to the ranking member and my Democrat colleagues as well as the priorities of the current administration in order to understand what legislative policies would meet each of their stated goals and concerns," Moore said. "I think our goals share more in common than most would admit."