WASHINGTON — When the 118th Congress dawns, count on the Energy and Commerce Committee to strike a posture friendly to fossil fuels, back policies to support pipelines and revisit the topic of energy permitting.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., the incoming committee chairwoman, said securing the country’s electric grids, making critical infrastructure resilient to cyberattacks and accelerating the permitting process will be priorities. “I think there’s an opportunity to do some permitting reform,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., a committee member, said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Democrats are girding to defend two of the Biden administration’s legislative achievements, the infrastructure law and the new health, tax and climate law. “We passed the most ambitious Democratic agenda in many years, and the next two years we’ve got to defend it,” Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., said. “Here, it’s going to be chaos.”
