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ENVIRONMENTALISTS TARGET CENTRISTS: Liberal environmental groups are targeting nine centrist Democratic House members who want to wait on passing a sprawling $3.5 trillion spending package to immediately approve a smaller bipartisan infrastructure bill.
These Democrats are threatening to withhold their votes from the party’s budget resolution this month until the House passes the bipartisan infrastructure deal and it gets signed into law by President Joe Biden.
The budget resolution Senate Democrats passed last week calls for the party to develop a legislative package that includes a “clean electricity payment program” paying utilities to generate more power from carbon-free sources, expanded clean energy tax credits, a Civilian Climate Corps, and more.
In a statement Friday, the Sierra Club said moderate Democrats are “undermining climate action.”
Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, challenged the centrist “radicals” in a tweet this morning to “show us the votes they have” to ensure the House can approve the bipartisan bill before the larger reconciliation package.
“They clearly don’t have them,” Raad said.
The centrists appear to be vastly outnumbered by House liberals, who make up the majority of the Democratic Caucus and who oppose voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill right away.
What’s the beef about: Centrists have expressed concern that the cost of the $3.5 trillion spending proposal is too high and would pile on to the nation’s deficit. They argue the infrastructure investments in the bipartisan bill are substantial and can’t afford to wait.
Liberals, though, say the bipartisan bill falls short on addressing climate change. They worry moderates won’t want a second bite at the apple if the House quickly approves the bipartisan bill and it’s signed into law. This could be the only chance for Democrats to pass significant climate legislation, liberals say.
Pelosi’s gambit falls flat: In an effort to appease the centrists, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to make a package deal out of the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure plan and the Democrats-only budget blueprint. Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes in the House, given Democrats’s slim majority
“I have requested that the Rules Committee explore the possibility of a rule that advances both the budget resolution and the bipartisan infrastructure package. This will put us on a path to advance the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats yesterday.
Tying the two pieces of legislation together for the rule will not tie them together to one vote for final passage, but it will advance them simultaneously, as the Washington Examiner’s Emily Brooks explains.
The moderate group, which includes Problem Solvers Caucus Co-Chairman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, and Maine Rep. Jared Golden, remain firm in their position and are not satisfied with Pelosi’s strategy.
“While we appreciate the forward procedural movement on the bipartisan infrastructure agreement, our view remains consistent: We should vote first on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework without delay and then move to immediate consideration of the budget resolution,” the group said in a statement.
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API SUES BIDEN OVER LEASING PAUSE: The American Petroleum Institute is leading a lawsuit filed this afternoon challenging the Biden administration’s indefinite pause on oil and natural gas leasing in federal lands and waters.
API and 11 other oil industry trade groups argue the Interior Department failed to satisfy procedural requirements and ignored congressional mandates for holding lease sales.
“The law is clear: the department must hold lease sales and provide a justification for significant policy changes,” said Paul Afonso, API’s senior vice president and chief legal officer. “They have yet to meet these requirements in the eight months since instituting a federal leasing pause, which continues to create uncertainty for U.S. natural gas and oil producers.”
The groups, which filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, say the Mineral Leasing Act requires quarterly onshore lease sales, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act directs the government to pursue “expeditious” development of energy resources offshore.
A Louisiana-based federal district judge already ruled against Biden in June, granting a preliminary nationwide injunction to end the leasing pause to more than a dozen oil and gas producing states that sued.
But the Interior Department has not resumed lease sales.
NUSCALE DEVELOPMENT: NuScale and utility Xcel Energy have reached an agreement to explore partnering on operating small nuclear reactors.
Under a memo of understanding announced today, the two companies are examining the possibility of Xcel being the main operator of NuScale’s nuclear plants.
NuScale’s first customer, a group of small, community-owned utilities in six Western states known as UAMPS, does not have experience with nuclear plants. So NuScale, a startup based in Oregon, is looking to partner with an experienced operator of nuclear plants to demonstrate competence.
Xcel has more than 50 years’ experience operating nuclear plants, and is the owner and operator of two plants in Minnesota.
The utility is touting a potential partnership with NuScale as showing its commitment to reach 100% carbon-free power generation by 2050.
NuScale’s small nuclear reactor design is the first to receive approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it hopes to be operational later this decade.
WATER WOES: It’s been seven years since drought-wracked California raked in $2.7 billion in bond funds that promised construction of reservoirs to capture excess water runoff during winters.
The money is sitting in a bank account without a single shovel of dirt overturned to begin construction of eight above-ground water holding facilities, the Washington Examiner’s Tori Richards reports.
Republicans say this is due to the state’s bureaucratic controls that cause major construction projects to take decades to complete. This dichotomy is apparent at the nation’s tallest dam, Oroville, which is at its lowest level ever, with only one-third of its water supply remaining.
The water level is so low that the dam is no longer a source of electricity as its turbines have shut off.
“That money is held up because of environmental permitting,” said Republican state Sen. Jim Nielsen, who has the Oroville Dam in his district. “The construction [overseers] said it will be six more years before we have water in that lake.
BIDEN’S INFRASTRUCTURE PITCH PUTS UNIONS IN SPOTLIGHT: Total union membership has been on a decadeslong decline as workers move further away from organized labor. While unionization rates remain high in fossil fuel-related jobs, they traditionally lag in clean energy fields. Biden’s infrastructure plan is meant to arrest or reverse the trend, the Washington Examiner’s Zachary Halachak reports.
At the heart of the proposal is a call for Congress to enact the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act. The PRO Act would essentially nullify 27 “right-to-work” states, which prevent employees from being required to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.
Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which focuses on many industries typically associated with union jobs, such as transportation and construction, also includes a demand that employers who benefit from the federal infrastructure investments “follow strong labor standards and remain neutral when their employees seek to organize a union and bargain collectively.”
The American Jobs Plan also envisions work associated with the investments being subject to prevailing wage laws, which effectively means the jobs would have to be union jobs or paid at the union wage rat
The Rundown
Bloomberg Cost to bury carbon near tipping point as emissions price soars
Wall Street Journal After bankruptcy, shale pioneer Chesapeake touts natural gas again
Bloomberg China has thousands of hydropower projects it doesn’t want
Calendar
TUESDAY | AUG. 17
10 a.m. ConservAmerica will hold a webinar exploring a federal Clean Energy Standard.
