President Joe Biden gave his full backing to Sen. Joe Manchin‘s permitting reform effort, which has failed to pass multiple times over the last few months due to opposition from many liberal Democrats, as well as Republicans.
Biden framed Manchin’s bill, meant to speed up the environmental review and permitting of energy infrastructure and to put a fence around litigation against such projects, as a means to continue reducing inflation.
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“Today, far too many projects face delays — keeping us from generating critical, cost-saving energy needed by families and businesses across America,” Biden said in a statement. “That’s an impediment to our economic growth, for creating new jobs, and for lessening our reliance on foreign imports.”
“I support Senator Manchin’s permitting reform proposal as a way to cut Americans’ energy bills, promote US energy security, and boost our ability to get energy projects built and connected to the grid,” he said. Biden has been urging Congress to pass permitting reform in recent weeks.
Manchin failed at least two attempts to pass his permitting bill, which he sought to do by tacking it onto must-pass legislation, despite support for the bill from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Schumer struck a deal with Manchin in late July to gain his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ green energy and healthcare spending bill, in exchange for a commitment to pass permitting reform by the end of the fiscal year in September.
That effort failed after dozens of House liberals and a handful of Senate Democrats, as well as Republicans who didn’t want to serve the Manchin-Schumer deal, pledged not to vote for it.
Many Democrats opposed the bill because it would facilitate new fossil fuel infrastructure, including by ordering relevant agencies to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a mostly constructed natural gas pipeline traversing West Virginia that’s been held up in court and strongly opposed by environmental groups.
Most Republicans have also opposed the bill for a variety of reasons. Some expressed frustration about being left out of the bill’s writing.
Manchin tried again by seeking to add his bill to the annual defense legislation, but that also failed, leading Manchin to release a rewrite and push for passage as an amendment to the defense bill.
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Schumer said Tuesday that Manchin’s bill would get a vote as an amendment.
