Source: United States Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND)
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ranking Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, joined Larry Kudlow on Fox Business to discuss the need for meaningful permitting reform, not Senator Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) so-called “permitting” deal. Excerpts and full video are below.
On Senator Manchin’s “Permitting” Deal:
“Before I went to Congress, I spent ten years as an energy regulator siting pipelines, transmission lines, wind farms, and all kinds of things and setting rates. All of this is important. Now I’m a big fan of cooperative federalism. I think our Founders had it right. But what this FERC piece does is takes away federalism and gives all the power to the federal government… And then worse than that they just spread the bill around to everybody. Socializing costs of monopoly infrastructure is a power for state regulatory agencies, not for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.”
“They want to have all the authority so they can [decide on] whatever infrastructure they want that helps their cause. Their cause being to do away with 24 hour, seven day a week, coal energy—even frankly some nuclear. When Mitch McConnell says this is reform in name only, he’s only partially right. This is reform [in] the wrong direction unless of course you want a pipeline in West Virginia, then it’s a swell idea. But I have pipelines in North Dakota that I’d like to have finished and no one’s offering me that deal for my vote.”
“It’s never ending and this Administration has been doing just what the Obama-Biden Administration did—they get into friendly lawsuits with their friends in friendly court rooms. They make these deals and they become law and no one ever votes on them… This sue and settle regime they’ve set up is the way they get by going around all of this stuff. We need real reforms, but [Manchin’s bill] doesn’t do it.”
On Creating A Permit Shot Clock:
“What Joe tries to do in his bill is set a one year Environmental Assessment timeline and a two year Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) [timeline], which is shorter than they’ve been doing but it’s still far too long. The problem is at the end of the one year or the two years, there’s no enforcement mechanism. There’s no default. So I’m saying, if you’re going to have two year EIS limit, then on two years and one day if the federal government hasn’t issued the permit, it automatically defaults to the applicant. Otherwise, what’s the incentive for [the bureaucracy] to hurry up?”
On Renewables in the Electric Grid:
“Even as it’s set up today, wind energy in the Midwest, for example, prevails over 24 hour, seven day a week, coal fired energy on the grid as per the way regional transmission organizations are required to dispatch electricity. So they already have a running head start in the marketplace regardless of cost. It used to be low cost is what drove the market. The more infrastructure the federal government can put in and be responsible for and enforce, the more of the stuff you can’t rely on 24 hours a day is going to get on the line. It’s got all kinds of problems. Just ask California. Ask Texas. Even ask the Northeast. They’ve had problems with intermittent energy, particularly when it’s either really, really hot or really, really cold and those are the bad times to not have a reliable grid.”