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Manchin Gets Rolled Again With New Permitting Streamlining Measures

Gee, anyone else not surprised?...........al

David Blackmon
May 05, 2024

In case you missed it, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) rolled out measures designed to streamline permitting for energy projects last week. You might think that would make Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) happy given that he surrendered every bit of political leverage he formerly possessed in August, 2022 to become the deciding vote to pass the Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act based on the promise from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi they would help him pass a bill to speed up such permitting.


But the folks at the Institute for Energy Research (IER) describe Manchin as being “livid” about the new permitting rules. Why? Oh, you know what’s coming, don’t you? Of course you do.

The reason for Manchin’s latest fit of pique is simple: CEQ’s new rules will apply only to energy projects helping the Democrat party’s rent-seeking client industries - wind, solar, and stationary batteries.

Here’s an excerpt from IER’s excellent analysis on the matter:

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) finalized a rule changing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to streamline permitting for infrastructure for renewable energy and transmission projects. NEPA, a 1969 law that requires environmental reviews for major projects, is a frequent focus of litigation that can delay construction for years. According to Biden’s CEQ, the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule will facilitate agencies moving faster on permits for infrastructure that can help the environment, thus ruling out fossil fuel projects which supply about 80 percent of the nation’s total energy. The rule sets deadlines and page limits for environmental reviews and establishes one lead agency to handle such reviews.

As part of the rule’s review process, climate impacts have to be considered as well as environmental justice — the movement to assist disadvantaged areas — and outreach to those places must be conducted. Biden’s regulation also reverses parts of the 2020 NEPA rule changes, implemented by the Trump administration, that opponents argued made it more difficult for communities to engage in the environmental review process and “attempted to curtail judicial review” of permitting decisions.

Past attempts to provide streamlining of NEPA have been met with outrage and hyperbole from environmental groups, including groups accusing legislative initiatives of “gutting” NEPA and “dismantling” the Act. Apparently because the CEQ changes support the politically correct renewable energy for which these groups advocate, as well as the new transmission these sources require, the groups have not waged their normal campaigns against the reforms.

According to the CEQ, the new rule “fully implements” new permitting efficiencies the administration and Congress agreed to last summer when Congress passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act to raise the federal debt ceiling, including “setting clear deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews, requiring a lead agency and setting specific expectations for lead and cooperating agencies, and creating a unified and coordinated federal review process.”

According to some members of Congress, however, the final rule reneges on the debt ceiling deal, and they believe that it will extend—not reduce—the time it takes to get traditional energy infrastructure projects, like oil and gas pipelines, built. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, in particular, said the White House “disregarded” the deal, “corrupting it with their own radical agenda.” He vowed to lead a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval “to get back to the deal that they cut with Congress and signed into law.” According to Republican state attorneys general, it constitutes “a dramatic example of federal and administrative overreach.”

[End]

So, once again, Joe Manchin, having surrendered every bit of political leverage he once possessed in a deal with the Devil (Schumer and Pelosi) finds himself getting rolled by the people to whom he surrendered.

Seriously: Is there anyone other than Manchin who didn’t see this all coming once he had given the Devil what he was after?

That is all.

https://blackmon.substack.com/p/manchin-gets-rolled-again-with-new?publication_id=712558&post_id=144328864&isFreemail=false&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true