Opinion
Leave Us Alone
Washington rarely gets out of its own way, so when 73 senators vote to let Americans build things faster, a libertarian should say thank you. The Senate on Monday voted 73-25 to take up the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, a permitting overhaul written by Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee and Democrats Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich. The bill deserves to pass. But senators should use this week’s amendment votes to strip out the parts that trade one kind of federal control for another.
Start with what’s right. The federal review process has become a toll booth that anyone with a lawyer can close. Capito told the Senate that permitting delays cost manufacturers $12.1 billion a year, citing the National Association of Manufacturers, and that $1.8 trillion in investment is stuck in federal reviews, citing McKinsey, according to her committee. You don’t have to accept every number to see the problem. A solar farm, a gas pipeline and a transmission line all wait in the same line, and the line is made of paper.
The bill attacks that paper directly. It would set limits on how long lawsuits can drag on and narrow the scope and length of reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act, Axios reported. It would also protect permits that have already been issued, which matters to anyone who has watched a project approved by one administration get yanked by the next. Predictability is a property right in all but name. An investor who follows the rules should be able to count on the permit.
Speed is not the same as freedom
Here’s where the bill goes wrong. The same 494 pages would expand Washington’s authority to site and approve some large interstate transmission lines and to oversee utility planning, according to Axios, although the sponsors trimmed some of those provisions over the weekend to win over the power industry. That is not deregulation. It is a transfer of decisions from states, counties and landowners to federal regulators.
Supporters will say the grid needs it, and they have a point. Capito noted that America’s energy demand “is growing rapidly,” and new lines are part of meeting it. But the libertarian answer to a bottleneck is to remove the barriers that make building expensive, not to hand a federal agency a bigger pen to draw lines across other people’s land. If Congress wants more transmission, it can shorten the reviews, cap the litigation and let the companies that want to build negotiate with the people whose property they need. The first two are in the bill. The third should be.
The same skepticism applies to “utility planning.” Every time Washington takes over a planning function, the plan grows, and the ratepayer pays for it.
Make the data centers pay, and mean it
The bill’s best idea may be its simplest. The Ratepayer Protection Act, folded into the package, would make data centers “pay their own way instead of American consumers facing increased costs through rising utility bills,” Capito said. CNBC described it as forcing artificial intelligence companies and data center developers to cover the power and grid upgrades they require.
That is not a handout or a penalty. It’s the principle that whoever causes a cost should bear it. A household in Loudoun County should not subsidize a server farm down the road through its monthly bill, and a tech company that wants a gigawatt should be free to buy one at the real price. Senators should resist any amendment that waters this down into a voluntary pledge.
The critics deserve an answer
Environmental groups and tribal advocates argue that the bill weakens protections and their ability to be heard, Axios reported. They are right that faster can mean sloppier, and right that the people who live next to a project should have a voice. Heinrich’s office says tribes would get an equal seat with states in transmission planning, according to a statement. That is a reasonable concession.
But a voice is not a veto, and the current system often gives a veto to whoever can afford the longest lawsuit. Deadlines on litigation don’t silence anyone. They make the government decide.
What to do this week
Whitehouse has promised a “very healthy amendment process,” according to Axios. Senators who care about limited government should use it. Keep the litigation limits, the review deadlines and the protection for issued permits. Keep the rule that data centers pay their own way. Cut back the new federal siting and planning powers, or at least sunset them so Congress has to defend them again.
President Trump has endorsed the package, CNBC reported, and the House is the bigger obstacle. Analysts at Jefferies told clients the House “now appears to be the binding constraint,” according to Axios. If the lame duck produces one law worth having, let it be one that gets the government out of the way, not one that just moves the government’s desk.
Dashiell Crane is the pen name of a Washington Inquisitor opinion columnist writing from a libertarian perspective. The views expressed are the author’s own and not those of The Washington Inquisitor.
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