Bipartisan ‘abundance’ caucus sets sights on NEPA

Congress’ big push to streamline environmental reviews for new energy projects ended last December with an impasse and a senior senator storming out of a Capitol meeting room.

Six months later, lawmakers have launched a bipartisan caucus they hope will bring fresh ideas and momentum to the stalled negotiations.

The House’s new Build America Caucus is taking on permitting reform — one of Capitol Hill’s thorniest policy issues in recent years — and hoping to generate legislative proposals that could make it easier to build energy infrastructure, manufacturing plants, transit, housing and more.

“We’re going to put the full force of our members to try and make sure that this gets done,” said Rep. Josh Harder, the California Democrat chairing the caucus.

The group — 17 Democrats and 12 Republicans so far — includes just one lawmaker who was deeply involved in last year’s discussions around improving the electric grid and accelerating permit approvals.

But one of the caucus’ strengths, members say, is the host of relative newcomers on both sides of the aisle who are eager to contribute to the effort after years of little progress.

The caucus is coming together at an opportune moment. The group is poised to help fill a void left behind by the retirement of several key negotiators last year, and it comes as the federal regulatory landscape is undergoing a sweeping transformation at the hands of the Trump administration and the Supreme Court.

Members say they want to be aggressive and ambitious in seeking out meaningful reforms. And in a notable shift from past attempts, multiple Democrats are eyeing the nation’s so-called bedrock environmental law as a potential target.

“We’re seeing the administration talk about permitting reform. We’re seeing a lot of Democrats say that they are incredibly frustrated,” Harder said. “I think now is the time to make sure that something’s happening.”

The idea is to create a sort of hub for lawmakers and outside groups to assess what has been standing in the way of progress and figure out how to combine popular elements of existing permitting proposals with new ideas, Harder said.

The group hopes to be able to develop bipartisan language that could be attached to broader bipartisan bills such as the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization or the Water Resources Development Act.

Members participated in their first energy-focused roundtable last month. They heard from energy policy experts about past attempts at reform, opportunities to improve the National Environmental Policy Act and other potential avenues for change — from judicial reviews to agency authorities.

The group has also drawn attention on Capitol Hill and among lobbyists for its association with the “abundance” movement, the pro-growth agenda championed by some high-profile liberal advocates and politicians.

But caucus members on both sides of the aisle say they’re all simply focused on reducing regulatory obstacles to build more of what Americans need and to do it more efficiently.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a founding member and perennial permitting reform advocate, summed up the group’s ethos in a May social media post: to “get shit done in America again.”

Member Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), the former chair of the congressional Western Caucus, said the new caucus is “hoping to look at anything and everything.”

“Whether it’s transmission lines, pipelines, nuclear plants,” he said, “those are all the kinds of things that I think — I hope — we can make a tremendous difference on.”

Going after NEPA

Other groups in Congress — the Western Caucus, the Climate Solutions Caucus, the Problem Solvers Caucus — have all made forays into permitting debates before. None has achieved the kind of comprehensive reform that businesses, utilities and advocates are clamoring for.

The Trump administration’s moves to upend the federal regulatory process and weaken environmental protections have created the perfect opening for a group like the Build America Caucus to flex its young muscles, said Eric Beightel, who led the federal permitting council during the Biden administration. The agency is charged with helping cut red tape and ease approvals for key projects.

“There is this opportunity for bipartisanship because there is a recognition that the system that’s in place isn’t working,” he said. “We don’t want to tear it down like the Trump administration is doing, but it is ripe for some new ideas.”

President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to approve permits for energy and mining projects on unprecedentedly short timelines and rolled back longstanding rules providing guidance for reviews under NEPA.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans used their party-line tax and energy package to vastly expand drilling and mining and accelerate some approvals.

The Supreme Court joined in with a unanimous decision in May restricting the scope of NEPA, reining in the kinds of sprawling environmental reviews that have made it exceedingly difficult and expensive for infrastructure and energy projects to get off the ground.

Among liberals, NEPA has traditionally been sacrosanct. But Harder was among the few Democrats who publicly concurred with the court’s ruling.

In a statement at the time, he said “it’s clear the NEPA status quo is unnecessarily burdensome,” and he called “current interpretations” of the environmental law “worlds apart from congressional intent.”

“The best long-term fix,” he said, “is a bipartisan bill that makes it easier to build the projects we need quickly while respecting environmental concerns.”

Peters has been the most outspoken Democratic advocate for revising NEPA and has sponsored legislation that would do so, including the House-passed “Fix Our Forests Act,” H.R. 471, with House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.). Peters said in an interview that as the caucus considers policy proposals, “making changes to NEPA is on the table.”

The Build America Caucus could give Democrats like Peters and Harder, who want to be more aggressive with environmental policy reforms, a new forum for honing legislative proposals with Republicans that could shield them somewhat from backlash from environmental groups, for example, which could make negotiations more difficult.

“It provides the political pathway for consensus on moving forward on [reforms] that, by themselves, might be perceived as very politically dangerous,” said Alex Herrgott, CEO of the nonprofit Permitting Institute and a former Trump and Senate aide. “It’s like safety in numbers, essentially.”

But caucus members say they want to begin gradually, starting by taking a closer look at the “Energy Permitting Reform Act,” the bipartisan permitting reform bill sponsored by former Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and then-ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). It served as the foundation for broader negotiations in the last Congress. Those talks ultimately collapsed.

Manchin has since retired and Barrasso has moved on to a Senate leadership position, removing him somewhat from the day-to-day policy discussions.

Former Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.), another key negotiator on permitting issues in recent years, also retired.

“There is room for new dialogue and new compromise to emerge that is not shadowed by literally a three-year debate that went nowhere,” said Herrgott.

Coming up with new ideas

Republicans’ budget reconciliation package consumed much of lawmakers’ energy in recent months, but some permitting-related discussions have been happening in the background.

The GOP tried to use their megabill to ease permitting for natural gas pipelines and export terminals, and to limit NEPA litigation for companies that paid a fee. Democrats called the proposals “pay-to-play” schemes.

In the end, most of the proposals ended up on the cutting room floor. The Senate parliamentarian said at least some of them did not meet reconciliation rules to bypass the filibuster. Language to accelerate some NEPA reviews remained.

Westerman, a leader in the permitting push, said recently that bipartisan talks were ongoing mainly at the staff level and that he hoped things would “really get rolling” after reconciliation.

Members of the Build America Caucus are beginning to circulate their own priorities. Freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) said he wants to work on ways to ensure that government regulations “stay out of the way” of natural gas production in his district.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a fan of the abundance movement, recently sent a letter to Trump and New York state Democratic leaders urging them to “swiftly adopt a pro-abundance policy of streamlining environmental reviews for any and all projects with a federal nexus.”

And Virginia GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans said she would like to see the caucus explore ways to leverage public-private partnerships to boost domestic energy production, manufacturing and supply chain resilience — but without exploding the deficit. She was among the handful of House Republicans pushing to protect some clean energy tax incentives in the reconciliation bill.

“No matter what industry you’re talking to, I think people agree that our energy needs are great and we need to start thinking differently,” said Kiggans, who has a major offshore wind project in her district. “I think it’s important for people who are fiscally conservative to have a voice in that space.”

Notably, lawmakers poised to be major players in the next round of permitting talks — like Westerman, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Democratic ranking members — have not joined the caucus. That could deprive the group of some firepower and leverage at the negotiating table.

Asked why he had not joined the caucus, Westerman said simply that “there’s a lot of caucuses.”

Still, Build America Caucus members feel that their group can eventually present a slate of policy recommendations and fresh perspectives significant enough that they won’t be brushed aside.

Peters said he, Westerman, Energy Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-Ohio) and key Democrats outside the caucus are going to be checking in with one another soon to “get a sense of where we are and pick up from last year.”

“I think we’ll be having discussions with the Build America Caucus along the way,” he said.