Tell the Senate: No dirty debt ceiling deals!

May 25 update – The latest intelligence has changes to our nation’s bedrock environmental permitting law, the National Environmental Protection Act, being traded away for some sort of minor tweak in the way electricity is moved through transmission lines. No one has seen either side of the deal yet, but it’s got all the indicia of a bad deal. NEPA must not be amended!

Squawk up. Send a letter (or another letter) today, more info below.

Will Joe Manchin hold the power and cast the deciding vote? Or will Senate climate hawks flock to the rescue, like they did last year, to prevent a dirty deal?

The term "permitting reform" is all the rage in DC right now, but it means different things to different folk. To climate hawks like Representatives Sean Casten and Mike Levin, it means using FERC’s power for clean energy. To Senator Joe Manchin, it means the return of his dirty deal, complete with the Mountain Valley Pipeline. To fossil fueled Republican senators like John Thune and Shelley Moore Capito, it means undoing bedrock environmental laws to speed up oil drilling on public lands.Republicans want to include the entirety of H.R. 1, the Polluters Over People Act, in the debt ceiling negotiations. That’s why Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, the author of much of H.R.1, is leading negotiations on behalf of the MAGA caucus. The White House and House Democrats are fighting back, but the Senate will be the proving ground.

In short, permitting reform is a mess. It’s the kind of ambiguity that grows like mold in a windowless, smoke-filled back room. And it sounds like permitting reform is up for compromise. We’re talking about the bad kind of compromise where one clean energy transmission line is approved in exchange for one fossil fuel pipeline, never mind the climate crisis.

Joe Manchin and his allies hope to present a deal to President Biden that pairs raising the debt ceiling with his zombie dirty deal on permitting reform - and looks like it could get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.  

We need to push back, and make it clear that a clean debt ceiling bill — without the zombie dirty deal or House MAGA energy bills attached — has more support in the Senate. From there, President Biden will be in a stronger bargaining position to push for a clean vote, and let Manchin and the Democratic caucus sort out a permitting reform plan later.

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