President Donald Trump has been working steadily, if not always effectively, toward making the United States a country that builds things again. However, he needs Congress to make this a permanent improvement by passing legislation that reforms the permitting process. The House Natural Resources Committee stepped up and began this task when it released its contribution to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which contains much-needed reform to the National Environmental Policy Act.

This February, about a month after Trump was sworn into office, the White House Council on Environmental Quality rescinded the regulatory framework that federal agencies use when implementing NEPA. The short five-page bill, first passed in 1970, has inflicted billions of dollars in costs and decades of delay on infrastructure projects across the country without any measurable environmental benefit.