One of the utility industry’s top lobbyists, former Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah, sees the thin majority the Democrats secured on Tuesday as an opportunity to force centrists of both parties to get energy infrastructure bills passed.
He believes a smaller majority in the House will help in passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a farm bill, which stalled in Congress ahead of the midterm elections.
“With this smaller majority that the Democrats have in the House, there’s certainly a scenario where the moderate voices in that caucus can have a pretty important role if they can find some common ground with other folks on the other side of the aisle, as well,” Matheson told the Washington Examiner.
“We are going to lean into this opportunity,” he added. “That’s the way we look at it.”
Matheson is the CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, representing 900 utilities in nearly every state, and a major proponent of Trump’s push to roll back the former administration’s climate rules for utilities.
With the Trump administration’s regulatory rollback set to proceed regardless of what Congress does, Matheson will focus his advocacy in the next Congress on getting things built in rural areas that support the utilities’ development of a smarter grid system.
Matheson wants legislation to enact changes to the loan and grant programs at the Agriculture Department and other agencies to provide greater flexibility to help his utilities boost both energy and broadband infrastructure.
The utilities want a grid that can overcome outages and save customers money, while also being used to leverage broadband and telecommunications development.
Right now, the Rural Utilities Service program only provides revolving loans to utilities for projects directly tied to energy. But Matheson wants that changed to provide both federal loans and grants for energy and telecommunications infrastructure such as broadband.
He says the federal government’s current programs haven’t made rural development a priority, and the reason for the changes.
“While roads and bridges are important, we think including investment in grid resiliency and ‘smart grid’ investments, and for that matter rural broadband” are just as important, Matheson said.
