President Biden’s Democratic allies and environmentalists are attacking his deal with House Republicans to suspend the debt ceiling over the legislation’s inclusion of provisions they fear undercut the administration’s green energy agenda.
The 99-page bill that would halt the debt limit until January 2025 and impose annual spending caps includes measures to fast-track the approval of new energy projects by putting a shot clock on environmental reviews.
The national debt stands at $31.8 trillion.
Also, the agreement approves all remaining permits required to complete West Virginia’s long-stalled Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline.
Those two concessions, Democrats and climate activists say, mark the latest incident where Mr. Biden has given major wins to the fossil fuel industry that work against his own climate agenda. The frustration among the president’s base raises the possibility of defectors as both sides of the bipartisan deal race to lock down support to pass the legislation this week before a June 5 default deadline.
“There is no room for compromise when it comes to our bedrock environmental laws, especially for communities that have been systematically targeted by polluters for decades,” said Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.
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Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, said greenlighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline should be “unthinkable” and repeated his call for the president to declare an official climate emergency to unlock more federal power.
Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous urged Congress to “reject this deal and swiftly pass a clean bill.” Other green groups like the League of Conservation Voters expressed displeasure but stopped short of calling for its defeat.
“It is especially egregious to mandate approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which locks in decades of climate pollution, threatens water quality and jeopardizes communities in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina, especially low-income, elderly, indigenous and Black communities that live near the pipeline’s path,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, an LCV senior vice president.
The $6.6 billion, 303-mile-long natural gas pipeline has for years faced legal setbacks. However, it’s a project near and dear to the hearts of West Virginia’s senators who slipped its approval into the bill: Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin III.
Energy groups, Mr. Manchin and Republicans said the pipeline will play a key role in meeting energy demand and blunting rising costs.
“I am pleased Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the MVP to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia,” Mr. Manchin said.
The bill text states that the “timely completion of construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is required in the national interest” because it will “serve demonstrated natural gas demand” in several regions. It also states that the project will “reduce carbon emissions and facilitate the energy transition.”
The Mountain Valley Pipeline’s red-carpet treatment came as a surprise to many in Washington. Although House Republicans demanded permitting reform to speed up energy projects, some were against singling out such projects. Mr. Manchin tried — unsuccessfully — several times last year to get it approved in various bills.
Democrats are vowing not to smoothly greenlight its completion.
Six House Democrats from Virginia, where the pipeline will also pass through, submitted an amendment to strip the pipeline from the bill. Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine will do the same in the Senate, his office confirmed.
A spokesperson for Mr. Kaine said he was “extremely disappointed” that the project was “bypassing the normal judicial and administrative review process every other energy project has to go through.”
“This provision is completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter,” the spokesperson added.
In addition to the pipeline, the debt ceiling bill includes changes to the bedrock environmental law known as NEPA, or the National Environmental Policy Act. Limits will be placed on certain environmental reviews for energy projects to one or two years to streamline the approval process which frequently includes years of legal setbacks and environmental hurdles that cost millions of dollars.
Democrats and environmentalists oppose such NEPA alterations over potential benefits to new fossil fuel projects.
Also included in the debt limit bill is the commission of a study on electricity transmission, a key component of Democrats’ push to electrify the energy grid with renewables.
As an olive branch, House GOP leaders are promising to support talks toward a broader bipartisan permitting package.
Meanwhile, Republicans lauded the expedited environmental reviews as a step toward increasing production to strengthen U.S. energy security and lower prices.
“Burdensome regulations smother all sectors of the American economy while ultimately doing more harm to the environment than good,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, Arkansas Republican. “While science and technology advances make energy, mining and infrastructure development safer and cleaner by the day, federal regulations continue holding us back and making us more dependent on our adversaries.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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