[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 131 (Wednesday, July 30, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4862-S4864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Permitting Reform
Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I am really pleased to be here on the
last week--or around the last week--that we are going to be here before
we return in September. I am particularly happy to be here with the
ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee to talk
about an issue that I think we both care about. So I am going to start
off and then yield to Senator Whitehouse.
As we both know, for too long, critical projects central to American
energy development, infrastructure improvement, and economic
development have been trapped in a cycle of redundant reviews, shifting
goalposts, endless redtape, and regulatory uncertainty.
Businesses large and small, looking to build things in our country
again, really need the certainty that is necessary for long-term
investments. And projects needed to deploy new energy technologies and
efforts to restore the environment have been caught in the same
regulatory swamp as well. This has been loaded on for years. Years of
changes in guidance have created a complex web of ever expanding,
duplicative, and contradictory requirements, while Congress has not
stepped in to provide the clarifications that our country needs. All
this has led to lost jobs, missed economic opportunities, and higher
prices across America, underpinning the importance of comprehensive
reform to our environmental review and permitting processes.
I can tell you, I get asked about this consistently, every day, and
more than a few times a day. So let me talk a little bit about my home
State of West Virginia. I have seen firsthand how projects that our
communities rely on face needless delays and how costs are then shifted
to our families, who pay more for energy, housing, transportation, and
basic goods as a result.
These types of delays nearly stopped what will become one of the most
environmentally friendly steel production facilities in the world,
which will employ over 1,000 people in Mason County.
Top highway projects like Corridor H that would improve both safety,
mobility, and create economic development have encountered multiple
permitting delays and uncertainty under a litany of environmental
statutes.
And even West Virginia waterline extensions, broadband deployment,
and bridge replacements have all faced delays from the Federal
permitting process.
If you spend time in my State and visit our communities and travel
across our mountains, it is obvious how important these projects are to
our State of West Virginia. They impact everything from how we heat our
homes to how we connect our schools with internet and maintain the
roads and bridges that our residents travel on every single day. Point
blank, these delays are holding our State and every State back from
reaching our full potential, robbing our people of investments and
economic development that would improve the quality of their lives.
So I believe it is time for Congress to act. Clearly, I am no
stranger to the ever elusive topic of permitting reform. Throughout my
time in the Senate, I have introduced multiple bills on the subject and
have been involved in the regulations on this topic. And while we were
able to include some reforms in the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility
Act, it is very clear that much more needs to be done.
The fact of the matter is, each one of us in this Chamber has a
critical need in our State that could be addressed by improving our
permitting and environmental processes, like building more housing--we
always hear about a housing shortage--or bringing energy projects
online--we hear about the expansion of nuclear that are going to be
held into the permitting process--or improving the conditions of
surface transportation infrastructure, just to name a few.
No matter what our constituents need, we all know that permitting
reform is needed to deliver projects more quickly and more efficiently.
In my role as the chair of the EPW Committee, where we have
jurisdiction over the laws that set the framework for our environmental
review and permitting processes, I could not be more earnest in my
desire to lead this effort with our ranking member. And our committee's
involvement on this issue remains apparent by the delivery not just of
this speech, as we are doing together, but as we continue to work
together with the goal of crafting bipartisan legislation.
Together, we started bipartisan conversations in our committee in
February when we held a hearing to gain the perspectives of leaders who
are directly involved with navigating these processes to ensure that we
would gather a complete look at all of the issues. We kept the hearing
record open for over a month to give all stakeholders the opportunity
to share their experience with the existing environmental review and
permitting processes and identify challenges and recommend possible
solutions to this Congress.
From this record, we garnered 107 submissions representing 146
individual organizations and an additional 854 individual requests on
how to improve the Federal environmental review and permitting process.
These responses have helped the EPW Committee identify the challenges
that persist across the wide variety of projects and to identify
consensus on potential solutions to address these challenges.
While we have talked about the issue of permitting for a number of
years in Congress, it is important that we currently find ourselves, I
think, in like thought all across the spectrum. Each branch of the
Federal Government--from executive to Congress and the judiciary--are
united in our dissatisfaction with the current permitting and
environmental review processes.
The Trump administration has taken numerous actions to cut redtape
and to put the United States in its best possible position to grow our
economy and create jobs. The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous
decision in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition case in May that
validated what many of my colleagues and I have long been saying, and
that is that the responsibilities of Federal Agencies under the NEPA
policy act have evolved beyond what Congress intended, creating
roadblocks instead of considering the environment in Federal decision-
making.
Right now, we have the momentum, I believe, needed to deliver
meaningful and lasting reforms to the environmental review and
permitting process, and I believe this is an unprecedented opportunity
and something we can truly accomplish. I do believe--and Senator
Whitehouse and I know this well--that there are areas of strong
disagreement in this area between the two of us, and what we are going
to try to do is to find those areas of like thinking that moves the
process along. No matter how difficult it might be, this is the only
way we get a permanent solution so that we don't see the swings of the
environmental process that we have seen over the last few years.
So, to start, durable and implementable reforms need to be
successful. They have to be bipartisan. Legislation that the Senate
crafts must take into account all types of projects, not just
politically favored projects, no matter who is favoring them, or
projects that will support the infrastructure needs of some Americans
but not others.
We must provide clarity and transparency in these processes and be
thoughtful in the way we craft the legislation. We need to address
every stage of these processes to find efficiencies, while balancing
public health, the environment, and the needs of our economy. And our
legislation must establish guardrails that cease the endless amounts of
Agency delays and litigation that stunt the development of our
projects. I have seen investments in my State collapse under the weight
of legal challenges, denying benefits to those that need it the most.
I want to stress that modernizing these processes does not mean
cutting corners or weakening our environmental and public health
protections, and this is exceedingly important to all of us and to the
process. It means focusing the government on meeting the needs of the
American people, ensuring
[[Page S4863]]
the quality of our environment for generations to come, and making the
processes more efficient, predictable, and transparent so that they are
not stuck in a bureaucratic purgatory of endless litigation.
So the reality is this: Hard-working Americans want a government that
works for them, not one that keeps them waiting for the benefits that
many of these projects promise to their communities. And what happens
when you wait? If the project still goes forward, it gets more and more
and more expensive with time.
I was encouraged to see bipartisan efforts from our colleagues in the
House of Representatives, as last week Natural Resources Committee
Chairman Bruce Westerman and Representative Jared Golden announced a
proposal to address many of the concerns I just laid out.
So as negotiations continue in the Senate, we must remember that it
will take a collaboration of both Chambers and the administration to
get impactful legislation across the finish line. The opportunity is
here. This is right in front of us. And I can guarantee you that I will
be at the forefront of these efforts to make sure that these reforms
can become a reality.
So I encourage my colleagues to heed the importance of this moment.
Many of our colleagues are talking about this and have great expertise
in this area, and we need your help.
With that, I yield the floor and am here to listen to my friend
Senator Whitehouse.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from
the Mountain State of West Virginia to talk about permitting reform.
People listening should know that we work together well, that I like
her personally, and that I am grateful to her for her support of
important Rhode Island projects that we have gotten cleared.
On permitting reform, there has long been bipartisan interest--
interest to speed the construction of transportation projects on
housing; interest to deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable energy
for American families.
As I have often said, the Federal Government often moves far too
slowly, and permitting is a prime example of this. Projects undergoing
environmental reviews are frequently stuck in limbo if just one Agency
drags its feet. ``Interagency process'' is the technical term for
multiagency decision-making. And interagency process is too often the
enemy of effective governance, too often the executive branch refuge
for incompetence, too often the executive branch shield against
accountability, too often the executive branch screen of bureaucratic
delay.
Permitting reform is a golden opportunity to fix this. We should make
Federal permitting faster and more efficient, all while incentivizing
project developers to engage with stakeholders early on in the process
rather than drag it out. It currently takes far too long to build
important projects in this country, and while Federal permitting is not
the only bottleneck, it is frequently a major one.
In the last two decades, China has built more than 25,000 miles of
high-speed rail lines, while the United States has completed zero. We
can and must do better. Chair Capito and I are both ready to do our
part to move permitting reform forward and, ultimately, across the
finish line. We are already engaging with our colleagues in the Energy
and Natural Resources Committee because those two committees have to
work together to make this work. And I hope Republicans in the House
are able to move to responsible legislation as soon as this fall.
But I must remind everyone again, because I have said this
frequently, that it makes no sense for Democrats to agree to permitting
reform until the Trump administration stops its lawless disregard for
legislative authority and judicial orders. The lawlessness is rampant,
and it is hurting people and communities and projects. Until the
administration shows it will honor its oath to faithfully and
impartially execute the laws--its constitutional oath--how can we trust
that any legislative compromise on permitting reform will be executed
fairly? And if we can't trust that, what is the point?
Trump has fired independent Agency commissioners, defied court
orders, and threatened to weaponize the government against his
perceived political enemies. His rescissions destroy bipartisan
appropriations accords. The Trump administration's record on this is
bad, and on energy policy, it is particularly awful.
The President declared a fake energy emergency despite record energy
production in America. He defied the very dictionary by defining
``energy'' to exclude wind energy and solar energy, the fastest growing
American energy sectors. He directed a halt to offshore wind
permitting, even stopping work on an offshore wind project actively
under construction.
Hang up your hardhats, guys; we are shutting down the project.
So if we want a permitting bill, this unconstitutional lawlessness
has to end. It is raising utility bills, and it is endangering our
energy supply. Just last year, 95 percent of the new energy on the grid
was wind, solar, and batteries--95 percent. This lawlessness kills that
growth.
And--I will add--we need offshore wind. I have a permitting reform
proposal for offshore wind. With demand skyrocketing, we need clean,
reliable, and domestic resources like offshore wind. Just ask the head
of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the impartial
source on grid reliability.
Our constituents are now facing higher costs on everything from
groceries to homeowner's insurance, thanks to climateflation.
Permitting done right will deliver cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable
energy and help stave off the worst economic harms of climate change.
Let's be clear: Without domestic clean energy, we are looking at a
vastly more expensive future. Renewable resources have near-zero
marginal cost. They drive down the cost of electricity demand. States
with more renewable resources do better heading off electricity price
increases than States with fewer renewables.
And without domestic clean energy, we are looking at an energy future
for America driven by Chinese innovation, Chinese industry, and Chinese
power.
The global future of energy is clean. We are either part of it or we
are left behind. Peak demand is expected to grow by 15 percent for
summer peaks and 18 percent for winter peaks over the next 10 years,
raising concerns about energy shortfalls.
What would reduce the risk of shortfalls? Better permitting, bringing
more renewables onto the grid, building transmission lines. Instead, we
are moving backwards, in the opposite direction.
Seventy percent of transmission lines are more than 25 years old, and
they are showing their age. Last year, we managed to complete all of
322 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. It is the third slowest
year in the past 15 years.
Thousands of electricity generation projects are waiting to connect
to the grid. As of last April, they have added to 2.6 terawatts of
power stalled for grid connections and millions of engineering,
construction, and manufacturing jobs also stalled in part because of
our inability to build the transmission lines for those connections.
We are entering a climate economic danger zone as climate upheaval
hits property insurance markets and threatens to upend mortgage
markets, which count on insurance, which threatens in turn to tank
property values if you can't get mortgages, which could take down our
whole economy. This is the path we are now on.
The Fed Chairman testified in the Banking Committee that in the next
10 to 15 years, there will be entire regions of our country where you
can't get a mortgage anymore--entire regions.
Failing to permit and build the clean, modern grid we need isn't just
foolish, it is dangerous. It helps put us on a path to climate and
economic disaster.
Let's stop pretending fossil fuel giveaways are energy policies.
Let's stop pretending that solar and wind are not energy. Let's stop
revoking funds for transmission projects that we need. Let's stop
acting like the clean, modern grid we need will build itself. Instead,
let's build the clean energy future that brings down costs, creates
jobs, and protects our communities, with the urgency this moment
demands. And let's do it, Madam Chairman, together.
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I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Hawaii.