(The Center Square) – Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to push through sweeping energy reforms despite Democratic opposition, including boosting oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
During a bill markup Tuesday, the House Committee on Natural Resources outlined its section of the upcoming reconciliation megabill. With over $15 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, the committee’s proposed bill more than satisfies the $5.8 trillion budget reconciliation instructions telling the committee to find $1 billion in cuts.
Roughly $12 billion in revenue would come from the bill’s expansion of onshore oil and gas leasing on federal lands, while about $3 billion would come from mandating increases in offshore leasing, both of which the Biden administration significantly curtailed.
The bill would also reduce both onshore and offshore drilling royalty rates to 12.5%, support domestic mining for critical minerals, and permanently reinstate coal leasing that the Biden administration had suspended.
“We’re working to bring production back to America, where we do it more safely, cleanly, and efficiently than anywhere else in the world,” Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., told committee members Tuesday. “We have the opportunity to secure our supply chains and restore high-paying American jobs, all while ensuring we’re wisely stewarding [our] natural resources.”
By using the budget reconciliation process, Republican lawmakers can pass the bill with a simple majority vote, rather than 60 votes, in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Democrats and environmental organizations are concerned that the legislation will get rid of environmental protections and strip communities from having a say in oil or gas drilling locations.
Ranking Member Jared Huffman, D-Calif., called it “the most extreme, anti-environment bill in American history,” that “turns our environment into an industrial sacrifice.”
Huffman and others particularly oppose a plan to ramp up oil and gas leasing in Alaska and the Arctic, as well as a proposal in the bill that would allow businesses sponsoring drilling projects to pay their way out of environmental assessments of their projects, including judicial review and public comment.
The Republican plan would fulfill President Donald Trump’s promises to “unleash American energy dominance” and make the country energy independent again.
Once Natural Resources finishes the markup, eight out of eleven House committees tasked with implementing the policy agenda within the $5.8 trillion budget resolution will have finished their work.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Tuesday that the full budget reconciliation package including all 11 committee bills should be ready for a House floor vote sometime next week.
