Axios Live: Permitting reform enjoys bipartisan support

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers discussed the main opportunities and challenges around permitting reform at an Axios Live event this week.

Why it matters: There is bipartisan support for legislation to streamline permitting processes, which has become a key policy issue in the U.S. race to dominate in AI and energy.

• Axios' Chuck McCutcheon and Nathan Bomey spoke with Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-N.D.) and Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) at the event, sponsored by Business Roundtable.

What they're saying: "It certainly has a lot of challenges, but I'm a freshman and I'm optimistic," Fedorchak said of moving permitting reform policy through Congress.

• "I sense that there's significant understanding amongst both Democrats and Republicans that the need right now is pretty serious," she said. "We have to get this done. We really need new power resources, we really need to expand our grid."

The big picture: "Because this is a planetary emergency, we've got to reconfigure our thinking to the scale of the problem," Schatz said. "We need to build big things rather than just be fixated on stopping bad things."

• "I'm pretty hawkish on permitting reform generally, and I have had some very difficult conversations with my friends on the left about the urgency of the moment."

The bottom line: "As a party, we have always zealously protected the environment," Democratic lawmaker Hickenlooper said. "And within permitting reform, I think what we're talking about is not in any way diminishing or diluting the environmental protections that we have in place."

• "What we're suggesting is that we can look at those risks and assess them, make sure there's full transparency that the public can see everything that's going on."

• "But once we go through that process … we've got to make sure that whether it's wind or solar, or it's a natural gas pipeline, once it's been approved, we want to make sure it can get built."

Content from the sponsored segment:

In a View From the Top conversation, Brendan Bechtel, chairman and CEO of Bechtel and chair of the Business Roundtable Smart Regulation Committee, explained why he thinks permitting reform is the biggest thing policymakers can do to unlock economic opportunity in America.

• "Permitting is now the critical path for most of the projects that we build," Bechtel said. "Because we build such large, complex projects, it usually takes longer to get the permits for our projects than it does to actually build them."