Barrasso for The Washington Post: The Hoover Dam let energy flow. Congress should take the hint.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Senate Majority Whip, today published an op-ed in The Washington Post about recently-introduced permitting reform legislation called the Let America Build Act. Senator Barrasso's legislation aims to streamline the permitting process and lower energy prices.

Key excerpts:

"Millions of Americans rightly worry about the strained electrical grids and higher energy bills that result from rising demand. Yet many projects that would help lower energy prices remain frozen for years by federal reviews before anyone can break ground.

"Washington can make it easier for businesses to grow, and for Americans to prosper, by reforming a federal permitting system that often hampers growth, especially for mines, pipelines and other energy projects. Needless and duplicative bureaucracy has delayed as much as $1.5 trillion in critical infrastructure investments. The biggest culprit is the National Environmental Policy Act…

"America used to make it easy to build. Construction on the Hoover Dam began in the 1930s and was finished that same decade, ahead of schedule. Since then, the Hoover Dam has provided affordable and reliable hydroelectric power to the Southwest. The nearly 2,000-mile Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 after only six years.

"These were not small undertakings. They were some of the largest infrastructure projects of their time. Today, building in America is not slower because projects are harder, but because the process is designed for delay.

"A bill I'm sponsoring in Congress, the Let America Build Act, is designed to help break the bottleneck of federal permitting for oil, gas and mining. Based on bipartisan work I did in 2024 with Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia) before his retirement last year, this bill would simplify and speed up the process for such projects. It comes as the Senate negotiates broader permitting reform legislation.

"To stop the barrage of unnecessary NEPA-based lawsuits, the Let America Build Act would limit the deadline for filing court challenges to 60 days. Strict deadlines for judicial decisions on energy projects would be paired with strict bureaucratic deadlines. NEPA reviews would be limited to evaluating a project's direct impacts, curtailing endless reviews based on speculative harm. The bill also would cut red tape to make it easier to build liquefied natural gas export terminals and give states oversight for drilling permits on federal lands.

"These commonsense reforms would boost American energy production and help lower energy costs for families. The United States needs to be energy independent and energy dominant. It is already the largest energy producer in the world, but the conflict with Iran has shown the danger of dependency on foreign powers for energy."

Click HERE to read the full op-ed.

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