Vice President Kamala Harris has never met an issue she hasn’t flip-flopped on, but that should not stop the Republican Party from finding out where she stands on permitting reform. The Democratic Party can subsidize factory creation, energy production, and home construction all they want, but until real permitting reform is passed, taxpayers will be wasting billions of dollars and hundreds of years on waste and delays.

This past week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 on a 15-4 bipartisan basis. The legislation, co-sponsored by Chairman Joe Manchin (I-WV) and ranking member John Barrasso (R-WY), would ease resource extraction, renewable energy creation, and power transmission. 

The legislation enables a true “all of the above” approach to energy policy with provisions designed to help oil and gas extraction, hydropower construction, mineral mining, and power line construction. Most importantly, the bill creates a 150-day statute of limitations for all legal challenges to any energy project and sets a 180-day deadline for federal agency action when projects are attacked in court. The bill also repeals President Joe Biden’s ban on liquefied natural gas exports and encourages the development of geothermal energy.

Radical environmental groups opposed the legislation, however, with Public Citizen calling the bill “nothing short of the first steps to implement the radical corporate giveaway agenda espoused in Project 2025, a sweeping far-right initiative led by the Heritage Foundation.”

On the one hand, Public Citizen couldn’t be more wrong: Nothing in the bill is a “giveaway” to anyone — unless you think letting people build power lines without interference from radical environmentalists is a “giveaway.” But on the other hand, Public Citizen is correct: The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is very much in line with Project 2025’s goal of making America a country that builds things again.

If anything, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 doesn’t go far enough. Instead of picking around the edges of the National Environmental Policy Act, the legislation that enables environmental radicals to stall any infrastructure project in federal court, NEPA should be repealed entirely. Not just for energy-related projects, both fossil and renewable, but for all infrastructure projects: factories, highways, railways, residential, everything. We have the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to ensure our air is breathable and our water is drinkable. We do not need to give radical environmentalists veto power over every construction project with a nexus to the federal government.

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But as essential as a full repeal of NEPA is, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is at least a good start, and Republicans should make every effort possible to force Harris to take a stand on the legislation. Does Harris stand with the American Clean Power Association and the National Mining Association and the millions of jobs and kilowatt hours they produce? Or does she stand with the radical environmentalists who create nothing but billable hours for lawyers?

Republican senators should press Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to bring this legislation to the Senate floor, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) should pledge House action on the bill as soon as possible.