[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 214 (Thursday, December 18, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H6029-H6033]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STANDARDIZING PERMITTING AND EXPEDITING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ACT
General Leave
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material on H.R. 4776.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Weber of Texas). Is there objection to
the request of the gentleman from Arkansas?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 951 and rule
XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House
on the state of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 4776.
The Chair appoints the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Miller)
to preside over the Committee of the Whole.
{time} 0920
In the Committee of the Whole
Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the
Whole House on the state of the Union for the consideration of the bill
(H.R. 4776) to amend the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 to
clarify ambiguous provisions and facilitate a more efficient,
effective, and timely environmental review process, with Mrs. Miller of
West Virginia in the chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIR. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered read the
first time.
General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed 1
hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority
member of the Committee on Natural Resources or their respective
designees.
The gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman) and the gentleman from
California (Mr. Huffman) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. WESTERMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Madam Chair, I rise today in support of H.R. 4776, the Standardizing
Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act.
The SPEED Act is a focused, bipartisan effort to restore common sense
and accountability to Federal permitting by reforming the National
Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
When Congress passed NEPA in 1969, it did so with the best of
intentions. It directed Federal agencies to consider the environmental
impacts of major Federal actions.
Unfortunately, what was meant to facilitate responsible development
has been twisted into a bureaucratic bottleneck that delays investments
in the infrastructure and technologies that make our country run.
The first Trump administration found that the average NEPA
environmental impact statement between 2013 and 2018 totaled 575 pages
and took 4.7 years to complete. A quarter of them took 6 years or more,
a glacial pace that costs the economy more than $100 billion a year.
Madam Chair, what reward do project sponsors get for persevering
through this slog? Too often, a gauntlet of premeditated, predatory
lawsuits. Nationally, NEPA is the most litigated environmental statute.
According to the Breakthrough Institute, just 10 environmental
organizations are responsible for 35 percent of all NEPA lawsuits. On
average, it takes over 4 years to resolve NEPA-related litigation on
environmental impact statements. I doubt there is a single Member of
the House who has not heard of a NEPA horror story from a family
construction company or a local official back home. Today, the word
``NEPA'' is more synonymous with red tape and waste than genuine
environmental protection. The SPEED Act would restore
[[Page H6030]]
NEPA to its original aim of intentional, sustainable economic
development.
The legislation fixes three major problems that, over the decades,
have turned NEPA into a bureaucratic black hole.
First, it restricts NEPA lawsuits to parties who are actually
impacted by a project, aligning judicial remedies with the procedural
nature of NEPA, while establishing reasonable filing deadlines to
prevent litigation from being used as an indefinite delay tactic.
Second, it clarifies what projects must go through NEPA, ensuring
that only projects with significant Federal involvement trigger review.
Third, it codifies and strengthens key aspects of the Supreme Court's
Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County decision from
this past May, clarifying the scope of environmental review under NEPA.
The SPEED Act is project neutral. Its reforms will ensure a fair,
predictable process and a level playing field for Federal projects
across all agencies and industries.
It is also timely. The United States' energy demand is projected to
rise by 35 to 50 percent by 2040. Data centers alone could see their
energy consumption triple in the next 5 years. The electricity that we
will need to power AI computing for civilian and military use is a
national imperative. Every day, NEPA red tape is becoming more and more
of an obstacle to American security and prosperity.
By restoring NEPA to its original intent, the SPEED Act will expedite
infrastructure projects, bring down prices, and help Americans realize
the energy dominance and mineral abundance that our natural resources
promise.
That is why a coalition of more than 300 industry associations,
businesses, and trade groups from all 50 States and Puerto Rico support
this legislation. They know the SPEED Act means jobs, fairness, growth,
and a safer, more affordable future.
Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Golden) for his
partnership in this effort. I also thank the many Members from across
the aisle who have engaged in a productive manner to develop and
improve this legislation.
Madam Chair, the SPEED Act will deliver the energy and infrastructure
that Americans need. I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I
reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This is our last day in session before Republicans close up shop and
send everyone home for a couple of weeks.
The majority could be using this time to do something, such as
provide actual solutions to the healthcare cliff that the country is
about to go off of, address the affordable cost of all manner of goods
and utilities that have been set in motion by their wrongheaded
policies, but no. Instead of doing anything to help Americans make ends
meet, we are here on the floor giving more gifts to Big Oil,
multibillion-dollar foreign mining corporations, and specialty
interests like the NRA.
I guess merry Christmas to all of them and a big lump of coal for
everyone else.
To no one's surprise, Republicans have been working all year on
handouts to Big Oil that were written for and by the oil and gas
industry. The first bill up on our Christmas list is for polluters. It
has been at the top of their wish list for as long as I have been in
this Congress. It is the SPEED Act, which is being sold to us as
permitting reform, and a spoiler alert: It is not permitting reform.
The bill takes a sledgehammer to the National Environmental Policy
Act, one of our foundational environmental laws.
NEPA was enacted in 1970 on a bipartisan basis to require Federal
agencies to do something that seems very basic: to understand the
consequences of their actions and to listen to the affected American
communities before approving major proposed projects. It is often
described as telling agencies that they need to look before they leap.
Madam Chair, I am not opposed to reforms to make NEPA and other laws
work better and to make it more efficient, especially for the build-out
of the stuff we need: clean energy and essential infrastructure.
However, we can do that while maintaining appropriate environmental
protections, respecting Tribal consultation, and protecting community
input. The SPEED Act does great damage to all of those things.
Instead, it abandons transparency and accountability, while ignoring
the single biggest permitting problem facing the energy sector right
now: the Trump administration's all-out war against wind and solar,
which includes a total refusal to permit these projects.
From the beginning, Democrats across Capitol Hill have expressed a
willingness to negotiate on permitting reform, including changes to
NEPA, but the first thing we needed to see was an end to the crazy,
arbitrary war on clean energy that is needlessly driving up energy
costs for millions of Americans.
I hope you will just take a look at the spaghetti mess behind me
because this is what Republicans have done to the permitting process
for wind and solar projects.
On July 15, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum signed a memo
listing 69 individual actions that require his personal sign-off. Of
course, this requirement only applies to wind and solar projects, not
to fossil fuels.
However, I will name just a few of the things that now require
Secretary Burgum to pause his global tour promoting fossil fuels all
over the world and give personal sign-off. If you need a temporary use
permit for anything, if you need a national trail system impact
evaluation, or if you need visual impact analysis, the Secretary of the
Interior himself has to take a look at what you are proposing and sign
off--69 times if you want to actually get a permit for a wind and solar
project.
{time} 0930
This is madness. Since the memo's enactment, there has been only one
single solar project all year long that has been approved. It was just
yesterday, and it happened only after heavy lobbying from the
Republican Governor of Nevada, who told the Department of the Interior
that it wasn't just that project, that there are actually 33 gigawatts
of solar and storage projects that are in limbo right now because of
this logjam that they have created, and that they are going to be key
to supporting affordable, reliable energy to meet increased load
growth.
To be clear, this is just one project that has made it through the
gauntlet. It was fully approved, by the way, under the Biden
administration, but then the Trump folks came along and put the brakes
on that project.
That is where we are. That is the context for this conversation,
where my friends across the aisle claim to care so much about an
efficient permitting process.
I think most Republicans would agree, at least privately I think they
would agree, that wind and solar are essential parts of the energy mix,
despite the President's war against them.
That is why, at markup, Chair Westerman did incorporate a few
Democratic ideas that at least attempted to provide some permitting
certainty for projects of all kinds. Now, those amendments didn't come
anywhere close to actually providing certainty for wind and solar
projects in the face of the administration's crazy war on clean energy.
The amendment would not get clean energy permits moving again, and it
did nothing to help projects that the administration had already pulled
the plug on.
Even that largely cosmetic step was too much for the Freedom Caucus,
and so they struck again. They demanded that the Committee on Rules
attach language to further stall clean energy permitting and to make it
even easier for the Trump administration to continue blocking wind and
solar projects in order to bring the SPEED Act to the floor today. That
was the condition for our being here, debating this bill on the floor
right now.
A bad bill got worse, so bad that the American Clean Power
Association pulled its support, joining the Solar Energy Industries
Association in opposing the bill. For months, we heard from Chair
Westerman exhibit A for why Democrats should feel comfortable
supporting this bill: The American Clean Power Association supports it.
That support has now curdled into opposition.
[[Page H6031]]
Mr. Chair, do you know who still supports it? The American Petroleum
Institute and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which put out a
statement immediately after the Freedom Caucus made the bill worse to
announce their great affection and support for this bill.
The bill has lost any claim for advancing tech-neutral energy policy,
if it ever had one. Trust me when I say that even if the House passes
this bill today, it is going nowhere in the Senate. What a missed
opportunity to tackle a serious issue that Democrats were very
interested in working on in good faith to find some solutions for.
Mr. Chair, I strongly oppose this bill, and I reserve the balance of
my time.
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Chair, I am glad my colleague across the aisle is
so good at reading the mind of the Senate, but I know this legislation
has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate. We have over 375
organizations from all industries in all 50 States that support this
legislation.
Also, I think my friend made the case for why we need the SPEED Act.
If we want to stop administrative ping-pong, then Congress has to act.
The SPEED Act is the bill to give us permit certainty so that we can
build all across our country in all different segments.
One area of the country that has been adversely affected by bad
permitting is in northern Minnesota, the home of my friend, Mr.
Stauber, whose district has a lot of mining resources that can't be
tapped because of permitting restraints and administrative ping-pong.
Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr.
Stauber), who is the chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals.
Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4776, which
I am proud to cosponsor.
I want to begin by commending two of my good friends, Republican
Chairman Bruce Westerman of the Committee on Natural Resources and
Democratic Representative Jared Golden, for their work in developing a
sensible, bipartisan, and balanced permitting reform package that will
allow us to build all kinds of important projects around this great
country.
Our permitting system is broken and has been broken for a long while.
It is almost as if our current permitting system is designed to block
projects rather than build them. This is something that all of us on
both sides of the aisle should be able to agree on.
The bill before us today is not designed to cut corners or weaken our
permitting system. It doesn't weaken environmental standards like the
Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered Species Act, which are
the bases of our environmental protection here in the United States.
This legislation is simply meant to address NEPA, which I would like to
remind my colleagues is a process statute.
NEPA has been weaponized for over half a century, virtually from day
one. In fact, the first lawsuit utilized to block a project under NEPA
was filed mere weeks after the statute was signed into law. Since then,
NEPA has created a cottage industry for attorneys who have made a
living suing to block good projects.
The bill before us today is meant to streamline the NEPA process and
close the loopholes that are constantly used to block good projects--
projects that we need to modernize our infrastructure, ensure we have
clean water, generate the energy that drives our economy, access
critical minerals we need to compete on the world stage, and so much
more.
Thanks to NEPA and our broken permitting system, it takes 29 years,
on average, to permit and build a new mine in the United States. That
is not okay.
I don't think a day goes by that I don't hear from a constituent
about their permitting woes, and I figure that is probably the case for
most of my colleagues in this Chamber on both sides of the aisle.
In northern Minnesota, the issue of permitting is particularly acute.
Not only is our broken permitting system used to block important
critical mining projects like Twin Metals, NewRange, and Talon, but it
is also used to block simple core infrastructure projects that we can
all agree on, like water infrastructure or roads and bridges.
In northern Minnesota, our cold winters lead us to having a short
construction window, much shorter than the rest of the country. When a
water infrastructure project or a road or bridge project gets delayed,
and they miss that construction window, it delays the project months
and adds hundreds of thousands of dollars to the project.
Mr. Chair, do you know who pays those costs? The local taxpayer, not
those who are weaponizing loopholes in our permitting system to block
necessary projects.
Our constituents have had to deal with the shortfalls of our broken
permitting system for far too long, and it is about time we address it.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to address this bill.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, I need to provide some translation
services for those who may not be fluent in Orwellian distortion.
When my colleague says that this legislation only deals with NEPA,
that it doesn't touch the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Endangered
Species Act, what that really means is that within the four corners of
this particular bill, they are not gutting those other laws. Rest
assured, they are working separately to gut those other laws.
In fact, just last week, Republicans attacked longstanding Clean
Water Act protections, and just yesterday, the Committee on Natural
Resources had a markup that advanced their legislation to gut the
Endangered Species Act.
For those who want to see a complete annihilation of environmental
protections across the board, rest assured, our Republican friends are
doing that, just not all of it within the four corners of this bill.
There is another translation that I think is needed. We heard from my
friend from Arkansas that they want to end the administrative ping-pong
process. What they really mean by that, if we actually read this bill,
is that they want the 69 individual steps that Secretary Burgum has
imposed on all solar and wind projects to remain in place. I guess that
is not administrative ping-pong, but I think it is an important part of
the translation.
Then, finally, we heard that this legislation is about restoring
NEPA's original intent, to just be a procedure bill. It is important to
understand that NEPA does require procedure, but it requires meaningful
procedure for a very important purpose: making sure that government
actions consider the impacts of what they are doing and, with
transparency and accountability, include communities so we can protect
the environment, human health, and other values.
{time} 0940
When you strip all of that out and leave NEPA as a box-checking
exercise, which is what this bill is, that is not preserving the
original intent of NEPA.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms.
Randall).
Ms. RANDALL. Mr. Chair, because of the Trump administration's
policies, families in my district and districts across the country are
struggling to afford their heating and electricity bills. Yes, we need
more transmission and clean energy projects, and it is true that the
permitting process is making that more difficult.
But how can anyone think that this administration, the Trump
administration, is a good-faith partner in permitting reform? They have
fired Federal workers and illegally canceled funding Congress already
approved, including over $1 billion for clean energy projects in
Washington State that had strong community support: a long-anticipated
hydrogen hub in the south sound, solar projects across the State and
the country, and freight and drayage improvements in the trucking
industry that would lower the cost of goods and decrease our
environmental impact.
We could have been lowering costs, and we could have done it in
partnership with environmental leaders, community leaders, and the
leaders of Tribal nations. Tribes deserve to be meaningfully consulted
on projects that affect their lands, water, and resources, no
exceptions.
That is why I offered two amendments: one, to give Tribes sufficient
time to engage in the permitting process, and then another to ensure
the offshore oil and gas drilling projects, rubber-stamped by H.R. 1,
July's big, ugly
[[Page H6032]]
law, still have to consider community feedback.
Republicans blocked my amendments, which is why I am voting ``no'' on
the SPEED Act, a bill that doesn't address the challenges my neighbors
are experiencing.
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. Bentz).
Mr. BENTZ. Mr. Chair, the purpose of process is to create a
predictable sequence of steps to achieve an outcome consistent with
substantive law. When process is allowed to intrude, the purpose of the
law itself is perverted.
As philosopher Franz Kafka described it, the process becomes
punishment. You aren't guilty or innocent yet. You are simply processed
until you run out of money, time, or sanity.
Procedure exists to serve substantive rights, not to supplant them.
As the Supreme Court stated in the Seven County case: NEPA is a purely
procedural statute, not a mandate for a particular result.
This bill, H.R. 4776, is designed to create sideboards on process so
that rote compliance is no longer the purpose of what we are about but
instead we focus on progress for this Nation.
Mr. Chair, I urge support of this bill.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).
Mrs. DINGELL. Mr. Chair, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 4776, the
SPEED Act.
For more than 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act, or
NEPA, as it is called, has been the bedrock of conservation law and
preserved the environment, human health, and the people's voice in
policy decisions.
The SPEED Act would limit the public review process and, quite
frankly, would undermine the original intent of NEPA. I do understand
the need to complete permitting and the Federal decisionmaking process
more quickly than is happening, but we cannot do so at the cost of
public input and transparency.
I happen to know. I happen to have lived with the original author of
NEPA. What he did when this was passed--and this is called the Magna
Carta of environmental laws around the world--is make sure that when
something is going into someone's community, the public has a right to
input.
Now, I said yesterday, I told my chair: This isn't the Ten
Commandments. We should work together and try to make it better, but
not at the expense of the public.
One of the most significant causes of permitting delays is limited
capacity at the agencies that handle NEPA reviews. The SPEED Act does
nothing to address recent cuts to staffing and funding at these
agencies, which is going to further slow down project permitting.
I remain open to working on a bipartisan permitting reform, but it
must be done to protect the original intent of NEPA.
I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 4776.
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), the majority leader.
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of the SPEED Act and
the work that Chairman Westerman and a bipartisan coalition of Members
of Congress have done to bring a bill to the floor that actually
focuses on letting us build things in America again, and, by the way,
to lower the cost of those projects that we want to bring.
In the past, you would see years. Recently, it takes 10 years or
longer to build things that used to take only 2 years. Why? Not because
of trying to push things to the side.
This bill still requires, Mr. Chair, that we comply with all the
State and local laws that are in place. We still would have to comply
with Federal laws that are in place. But what it does is it finally
brings common sense by cutting red tape, Mr. Chair, red tape that
dramatically increases the costs and, in some cases, just makes it
economically unfeasible to do projects, to build roads, to build
bridges, to build pipelines to move energy, to lower costs for
families, to build housing. This bill will allow us to bring more
affordable housing to the marketplace in an environmentally protected
way, by the way. Those laws are still in place, but they just can't be
abused as has been the case over decades.
When the law was created in the 1960s, the intent was never that NEPA
would be used to stop projects. It would be that you would review these
projects like you review any other laws, like the Endangered Species
Act, which unfortunately has been heavily abused, too--we are going to
reform that as well--and all of the other laws that are so abused to
stop projects from being built in America.
Some people say why can some of these other countries build a road or
a bridge in 16 months and it takes us 10 years to do it in America? It
is because we have allowed these laws like NEPA to become so heavily
abused, where people who have no relation to the project can file
lawsuit after lawsuit that have nothing to do with the project. They
just want to slow down and stop the project. How about we bring common
sense back into permitting. That is what the SPEED Act does.
Again, do these people not trust the States that still have to permit
at the local and State level, along with all of the other Federal
permits that need to take place?
We used to build things in America at rapid speed. We can do it
again, and we will do it again with the SPEED Act. Let's allow America
to do all the great innovative things it used to do.
Look at AI, what artificial intelligence is allowing us to bring. But
we need to upgrade our electricity system. We need to build more power
plants, not just for families but for innovation. It is almost
impossible to do if we don't reform some of these outdated regulations
that have been abused. Everybody knows they have been abused. Until we
update our laws, we are not going to be able to build things again in
America in a timely way.
Let's get things done in 2 years, not 10 years or never. Many of
these projects get shelved, just never get built. Really, they do get
built. They get built in other countries because our laws haven't been
updated the way they need to be, to allow us to build things again in
an economical way.
Lower the cost of building houses in America. Lower the cost of
building roads and bridges in America. Lower the cost of building
energy projects in America while still respecting environmental laws
but just removing the red tape that is killing our ability to innovate.
This is a great bill that needs to happen. I am so glad Chairman
Westerman did the work to build a bipartisan coalition to get things
done in America again. Let's get the SPEED Act passed, Mr. Chair.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Peters).
Mr. PETERS. Mr. Chairman, for nearly 20 years, electricity demand in
the U.S. has barely moved, but that era is over.
Today, we are facing a potential for electricity demand to grow up to
fivefold. Meeting this energy demand will be a challenge. The
environmental laws of the 1970s were built for defense, but the
environmental imperative of today is to build, and that is why we need
permitting reform.
{time} 0950
However, that doesn't just mean building pipelines and gas plants but
also wind, utility-scale solar, and interregional high voltage electric
transmission, all of the above. Like President Obama used to say, all
of the above and like my Republican colleagues used to openly say at
least before November of last year.
I was glad to see Chair Westerman introduce and advance the SPEED
Act. Reforming NEPA, the most litigated environmental law on the books,
is necessary if we are going to make America competitive and if we are
going to protect our environment.
There are many important reforms in this bill, and I want to note
that. That is why earlier this month I led a letter with 30 of my
Democratic colleagues, outnumbering the members of the Freedom Caucus
we saw on the floor this week, but explaining our support for reform
and exactly what we needed to get more Democrats to ``yes'' on SPEED.
At the top of that list is permitting certainty, which the ranking
member has already mentioned. Mr. Chair, if
[[Page H6033]]
you apply for a permit for a project that complies with the law, then
you should be able to get that permit, and you should be able to rely
on it.
Thoughtful permitting reforms, many of which are in the SPEED Act,
are meaningless if the executive branch is allowed to revoke issued
permits for no good reason, or if the permitting process can be
subjected to political gamesmanship.
The language added to the SPEED Act at markup would have restricted
some of the political interference with issued permits, and that was a
great start to solving the problem. It wasn't everything we needed, but
it was a lot. I was confident that a bipartisan bill was well within
reach.
I was really disappointed this week that some of my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle, after seeing that good bipartisan progress,
decided to force this bill in the other direction this week to satisfy
grievances and score political points instead of doing what is best for
the country. An all-of-the-above energy strategy is what we were after.
That took a big hit this week.
Giving Donald Trump, or any President, the ability to decide what
gets permitting reform, which would be the effect of the partisan
amendment added to the SPEED Act behind closed doors, significantly
reduces certainty for investment in America.
That provision codifies a broken permitting status quo, instead of
setting a level playing for everyone. Energy producers, investors, and
communities want to know that investment in America, regardless of the
electrons powering that investment, is safe from the swing of the
political pendulum, and, unfortunately, that goal has not yet been
achieved.
We need to get permitting reform done in this Congress. I look
forward to working with my colleagues across the aisle in the Senate to
craft a bipartisan product that could become law. This is not the final
draft. I think there is more we can do.
Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Michigan (Mr. Walberg), who is on the Natural Resources Committee and
is also the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee.
Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for yielding.
Mr. Chairman, as the Member who represents one-half of NEPA's
original author's district, I rise in strong support of the SPEED Act.
This bipartisan, commonsense legislation will streamline our permitting
process, making it faster, more predictable, and more accountable.
Currently, our broken permitting process delays critical energy,
infrastructure, and manufacturing projects for years. This not only
hurts workers but raises costs for hardworking families and makes us
more dependent on foreign countries, including our adversaries.
In Michigan, we need access to reliable energy to meet our growing
demands, increase affordability, and help us compete. However, these
essential projects can't move forward if our permitting process is
holding us back.
The SPEED Act addresses these issues by streamlining reviews, setting
clear timelines, and improving coordination across agencies.
Mr. Chair, this legislation helps us build again in this country,
from energy projects to manufacturing facilities. America is entering a
golden age of energy dominance thanks to President Trump's policies and
the Working Families Tax Cuts that Republicans passed earlier this
year.
The SPEED Act builds on this progress by cutting bureaucratic red
tape, bringing back good-paying jobs and revitalizing our
infrastructure and energy sectors.
We must restore common sense to our permitting process so we can
unleash American energy and lower costs for hardworking Michiganders.
For all those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote
``yes.'' Michigan will thank you.
Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Colorado (Ms. DeGette).
Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Chairman, I am a strong proponent of elimination of
unnecessary regulations and of permitting reform, but this bill doesn't
streamline permitting. It blindfolds the agencies meant to protect us
and our natural resources.
Under this legislation, the agencies could not consider new science,
even from the project applicant; conduct new environmental reviews; or
assess indirect, let alone cumulative, impacts.
This anti-fact, anti-science administration would rather live in
denial than understand the full impact that these projects could have
on our health.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled on a case in my home State
of Colorado. A 100-mile crude oil train route along the Colorado River
was approved despite local objections and Federal estimates that spills
would occur once every 5 years. The court said that agencies did not
need to consider these downstream impacts.
This ruling alone is alarming, but the bill goes farther by outright
preventing agencies from considering those factors.
This law says that ignorance is bliss. That is why I offered an
amendment to widen the scope of review to ensure that agencies weigh
all relevant facts and subsequent consequences. If we have information,
then we should use it. Republicans refused to accept that amendment in
the Rules Committee.
Rather than supporting agencies with the funding and staffing they
need to process applications faster, Republicans just want them to look
the other way.
Most Americans believe any job worth doing is worth doing right, even
if it takes a little more time. However, cutting corners today means
that we are going to have to clean up disasters tomorrow, and those
costs won't fall on us, Mr. Chairman. They will fall on the communities
we are supposed to protect.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
The Acting CHAIR (Mr. Stutzman). The Committee will rise informally.
The Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Bentz) assumed the chair.
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