Environment Legislative Hearing: From Gridlock to Growth: Permitting Reform Under the Clean Air Act
2025-09-16
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Source: Congress.gov
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companies from investing in cost-efficient and effective technology. At the core of the Clean Air Act is the idea that we can protect our environment without sacrificing economic growth. In the decades since it passed, the Act was largely successful in accomplishing this goal, but that success is threatened by outdated provisions that do not function well today. The Clean Air Act as it stands holds outdated provisions that punish American job creators for missions they have no control over. It discourages wallfire mitigation measures, threatening this country's air quality. It risks our economy and national security because of pollution that comes from outside the United States. It threatens our ability to stay competitive in the global artificial intelligence race. Most importantly, it inhibits the United States' ability to meet our domestic energy needs. Americans care about clean air. They also care about rising electricity costs in our economy. They understand that excessive regulation and outdated statutes do not equate to good or effective regulation. They care about technological advancement, not punishing American companies who lead that advancement. The witnesses we hear from today have extensive experience with the challenges presented by these outdated provisions and are well suited to explain their impact. I look forward to their testimony and their feedback on the discussion drafts. In June, we held our first hearing on the need to update the Clean Air Act. At that hearing, we heard testimony from about the billion dollar price tag from Clean Air Act regulations doing little to improve air quality and the state of our economy. At that hearing, my colleagues across the aisle were critical of the proposals discussed because reforms were discussed in prior Congresses. They challenged us to introduce novel ideas to reform the Clean Air Act. It's feedback we took seriously. I encourage the panel of witnesses before us today to give us their best solutions for modernizing the Clean Air Act, both novel and previously discussed. Some of these solutions may not be novel, but our permitting problem isn't novel either, and it is not getting better.
Thirty-five years have passed since this committee meaningfully updated the Clean Air Act. It is our job to make sure that legislation passed out of this chamber is functioning effectively and is updated when needed. Let's take this opportunity to modernize out-of-date legislation and create an effective permitting program that works for the American people. I thank the members of the committee who are leading these efforts, and I hope my colleagues take the opportunity to engage in meaningful permit reform. I now recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee, my friend from New York, Mr. Tonko, for five minutes for an opening statement.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to our witnesses. I especially recognize Ms. Coons with Micron. Micron is making historic investments in upstate New York, creating thousands of well-paying jobs and revitalizing communities that have been rusty in recent decades into hubs for the next generation of advanced manufacturing in the United States. And we're most appreciative. grateful for those investments to breathe new life into our region and help secure our nation's future economic competitiveness in such an important and strategic industry. This is an exciting time, but I also recognize there is a right way to develop these types of projects. one that allows for community engagement and mitigation of environmental harms. And there is a wrong way, where we cut corners, take shortcuts, and exempt our way out of needing to care about pollution and its health consequences. While I do not doubt that some Clean Air Act permitting processes could be reexamined, we should not overlook how effective the law has been historically at allowing our economy to grow while reducing dangerous air pollution. As I've said at past hearings, I do not take this past successes evidence that we require a dramatic departure from the law. On the contrary, There is still much more work to do to ensure all Americans can breathe healthy air. More than 156 million Americans are living in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. This is not the first set of proposals to reform the Clean Air Act examined by the subcommittee this year. And much like that first slate, I have serious concerns with each of the bills before us today. Of all of the bills on the docket, I want to single out the Air Permitting Improvements to Protect National Security Act, which would create a new presidential exemption in the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately, we have already seen EPA and President Trump completely abused the exemption process established in Section 112 of the Act for National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.
EPA solicited requests for exemptions from regulated entities. And the president has granted them with essentially no public process or justification. This is a horrible, opaque way to manage environmental regulations, allowing the president to handpick individual firms potentially for political reasons to receive special treatment at the expense of the people that live near these polluting facilities. Creating another presidential exemption process after seeing how the existing process has been so brazenly abused by this administration would be a dereliction of our duty as the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Clean Air Act. But with that said, I know there remains significant stakeholder interest in Congress pursuing some version of bipartisan permitting reform.
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