Bernie Sanders is embarrassing himself. The Vermont senator is pitching a fit about Democrats’ plans to attach reforms streamlining the approval of energy projects to a must-pass piece of legislation like a bill funding the government. He calls it Joe Manchin’s “side deal,” and that’s about the only thing he’s right about.
Yes, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — along with President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — did strike an agreement with West Virginia’s Manchin in exchange for his pivotal support for the vitally important Inflation Reduction Act, which became law one month ago.
The deal, which everyone knew about before voting yay or nay, was that by the end of the year, the Senate would piggyback provisions cleaning up the insanely cumbersome, expensive and lengthy approval process for all manner of energy projects onto a big, can’t-fail bill, essentially ensuring its passage.
There’s a powerful, pro-environment policy argument for doing this, which is why climate-change-crusading Democratic senators like Tom Carper and Brian Schatz are the ones who’ve been pushing the ball forward for years. The average review under the federal National Environmental Policy Act now takes 4.5 years to complete and runs more than 660 pages long.
These are bureaucratic cinder blocks attached to the ankles of solar and wind and geothermal projects and grid upgrades, not just oil and gas pipelines, and when they don’t add punishing cost and time, they kill many worthy upgrades altogether. The big bulk of energy investments that would benefit from streamlining are ones that would curb, not increase, greenhouse gas emissions.
So obvious is the need to shred red tape here, the bipartisan infrastructure law passed late last year (which Sanders supported) contained provisions that are already doing for transportation and other infrastructure projects what Carper, Schatz, Schumer and Manchin want for energy projects.
Even if Democrats were inclined to break their word, there’s a huge pile of excellent policy reasons to reform the permitting process. But why should they want to break their word?
