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Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today because all around the country, people understand it takes far too long to build something in America. It has to do with permitting.

Americans want to build. We are ready to build. People are ready to finance it. The problem is, to build something in America today, it is costly, it is complex, and there is a cumbersome permitting process. In America, amazingly, you need to get permission from the government to build just about anything.

Now, I represent Wyoming. It is an energy State. It is America's energy breadbasket. We have world-class coal. We have abundant supplies of oil and natural gas. We have the richest uranium deposits in the world. And all of these affordable, available, and reliable forms of American energy are ready to power our country, not just now but for generations to come.

We have world-class energy workers in Wyoming, as you do in your home State of Oklahoma, and we do all across the country. These people are ready to do the job. The Federal permitting process is standing in their way.

The Federal permitting process is fundamentally broken. Permitting has become burdened by bureaucracy and weaponized by litigation, and we have a system that will not let us get to work. American energy, mining, roads, bridges, and buildings--all of them are caught in the crosshairs of a culture of saying no.

Energy projects have been especially delayed by the bureaucrats and the trial lawyers. These are individuals who have never built a thing. Yet they believe they deserve veto power over those who do.

Meanwhile, energy demand in America is rising dramatically. The new energy demand across America is adding up like adding an entire new California to the grid. Those are the needs. Every permitting delay costs our economy and our Nation. Delays mean higher utility bills. Delays mean paychecks are lost, money doesn't get earned. Delays mean fewer investments in our communities. This is all unacceptable.

We need to produce more American energy, and we need to produce more in order to lower costs. The best way to spur the government to issue permits is to impose strict deadlines and to stop these endless lawsuits. It seems that builders need a clear yes or no. And once approved, they need certainty that their permits will endure. That has been a real problem.

There is a law called NEPA. It stands for the National Environmental Policy Act. It is the biggest obstacle. NEPA essentially halts any and all development in its tracks. NEPA was enacted in 1970, and it required costly and sprawling environmental reviews.

America was built by men and women of daring. Now they face delays.

Our forefathers laid steel across mountains, they poured concrete into canyons, and they built towering skyscrapers that still inspire the world. Americans forged our Nation's future with speed and with purpose.

We built the Empire State Building in a little over a year. We built the Hoover Dam in just 5 years. We built the 2000-mile Transcontinental Railroad in just 6 years. That was a long time ago. You could get things done.

Today, a single environmental review with NEPA can take 4 years or longer just to get the review done. That means you can't start construction without spending at least 4 years in the penalty box.

It is embarrassing that it takes so long to approve everyday projects today, much longer than it took to build the wonders of the modern world.

Right now, $1.5 trillion in critical infrastructure is trapped. It is trapped in the desks of unelected, unaccountable, heavyhanded bureaucrats. The money can't move, and Americans pay for every year a project sits on those desks.

To make matters worse, NEPA is also the most litigated of all Federal environmental laws. If you want to do something, you are going to get sued. On average, over 100 lawsuits related to NEPA are filed every year. Malicious lawsuits filed by radical environmental activists lead to higher costs, more delays, no progress. Too many prefer legal molasses to affordable oil and gas.

Just last year, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to limit the scope of NEPA in terms of all these environmental reviews, which have grown dramatically. Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion that NEPA has become ``a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents . . . to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure or construction projects.''

The Supreme Court's unanimous opinion is right. NEPA was once called the ``environmental Magna Carta.'' Today, it is a regulatory Berlin Wall.

Since day one, President Trump has prioritized rolling back burdensome regulations. The President has accelerated the permitting process--rightly so. Americans are already seeing the results. We are producing a record amount of energy. But we can do more, and we must do more, and we must do it quickly.

Now is the time for Congress to act. I am soon going to introduce legislation to break the bottlenecks in Federal permitting. This is the No. 1 way to boost American energy and mineral dominance, and to lower prices, lower costs, and lower what has to come out of people's pockets.

My legislation will encourage access to oil and gas resources on Federal lands and offshore. It will also enact commonsense judicial reforms to NEPA.

The Senate has a good start on the permitting process. Senator Manchin and I introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024. We did that when we were at the Energy Committee together. This was bipartisan legislation designed to fix the Nation's permitting process and the rules. It was carefully negotiated over the course of an entire year, and it earned strong bipartisan support. It passed our Energy and Natural Resources Committee 15 to 4.

Today, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Senator Mike Lee of Utah are taking the lead to advance commonsense permitting reform using this model as a background. Senator Capito chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Senator Lee chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. They are the key committees for permitting reform. Senator Capito and Senator Lee are doing exemplary work. It is time for all Senators to find common ground on permitting.

Americans still know how to build. We build the best in the world, and we want to build. We are a nation of builders, and we are not a nation of waiters.

That is where we are. We need to get this done, and it is time for America's permitting process to get out of the way.

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