Dems vote for higher energy prices
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The Senate passed a resolution last week that would preserve part of President Donald Trump's commonsense permitting reform. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) crossed party lines to vote with Republicans. All other Democratic senators voted to keep President Joe Biden’s job-killing rollback of permitting regulation to what it was in Obama's time.
"For years I’ve worked to fix our broken permitting system and I know the administration’s approach to permitting is dead wrong,” Manchin said. “Today’s vote to repeal these burdensome NEPA rules is a step in the right direction. But unfortunately this legislation is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives.”
When Manchin says “NEPA,” he is referring to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, which empowers environmental activists to go to federal court to stop any infrastructure project that receives a single dime of federal money. These lawsuits can take years, causing unnecessary delays and driving up the cost of infrastructure projects.
Every pipeline and transmission line built in the United States is vulnerable to NEPA delays. The cost of interstate highway construction, for example, has tripled since NEPA became law, making the U.S. one of the least efficient infrastructure investors in the entire world. The average environmental review required by NEPA now takes an average of four and a half years and runs thousands of pages long.
The Trump administration issued regulations reforming the NEPA process, including a two-year limit for all NEPA reviews. Biden undid these commonsense reforms last October. Using the Congressional Review Act, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) forced a simple-majority vote that would overturn Biden’s decision. Now, the House of Representatives needs to pass an identical resolution.
As Manchin noted, that is never going to happen as long as the Democrats control the House. This leaves one wondering why Manchin would take Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) word that she will pass separate NEPA reform legislation later this year, after Manchin does his part and votes with every other Senate Democrat to raise taxes on energy producers and manufacturers.
If Democrats were truly interested in the NEPA reforms that Manchin knows are desperately needed, they would have voted with Republicans on Thursday to keep those reforms in place. None of them did, except for Manchin. There is no reason to expect any different result before November.
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This is another example of why American voters should vote against every Democrat on the ballot. They think they can "save the country" by destroying a key component of the US economy. The environmental wakos need to be stopped before they make matters worse.
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