Permitting Backers Want Senate To Rack Up Vote Count To Send Message To The House

Backers of the Senate's sweeping permitting bill are setting a high target for its performance in its first vote — a bar that could depend on painstaking negotiations involving tribal politics and constraints on the White House’s power to kill energy projects.

Proponents of the bill see racking up at least 70 supporters in the Senate as key to motivating quick passage in the House, where there have been considerably more vocal detractors of the text — especially on the Democratic side of the aisle, where concerns are mounting over its potential impacts on tribal consultations related to energy projects.

"What we are pushing for is 15 to 20 Democrats on the Senate side supporting this legislation,” said an energy nonprofit staff member, granted anonymity to speak candidly, whose organization is lobbying for the bill’s passage on Capitol Hill. “I think there'll be some losses on the Republican side, but [we] also want to send a clear signal to Dems on the House side that there's broad support for the legislation.”

The Senate is set to take up a procedural vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act on Nov. 9, when lawmakers return to Washington following the midterm elections. That vote would require at least 60 senators for the bill to move forward.

A potential final Senate vote on the text could happen the following week.

Right now, rank-and-file Senate Democrats are asking for adjustments to the bill’s changes to the National Historic Preservation Act, two people familiar with the negotiations said. Native tribe representatives and some Democrats criticize those changes as blocking tribal consultations on projects proposed in their communities.

The NHPA section, and tribal nation’s almost unanimous concern, is the “number one challenging issue” that could jeopardize Democratic support, according to a Senate Democratic aide who also said that 70 votes would push House Democrats to support the bill.

“It’s fraught for everyone,” the aide said. “On one hand, if you’re being a true partner to tribal nations, their ask is to strike the entire section. We are told by negotiators that’s not gonna be possible. It’s too much of a priority for [Utah Republican Sen. Mike] Lee.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) — one of the champions of the permitting text — has defended the bill’s provisions related to the National Historic Preservation Act but has signalled openness to changes in recent days.

“Negotiations continue on the Tribal consultation provisions of the bill,” a spokesperson for Heinrich said Wednesday. “But he is continuing to keep the pressure on to secure more.”

Also top of mind are the Trump administration’s attempts to slow-walk new permits for renewable energy projects and revoking of permits already awarded to wind energy projects, a clean energy lobbyist, who's been in communication with the offices of Senate Democrats, said. Democrats broadly support Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) efforts to seek extra assurances from the Trump administration that it would stop its attacks on already permitted projects.

The lobbyist also said the staff of rank-and-file members are interested in adjustments to the executive certainty language of the bill. There are fears that the language negotiated by Democrats to protect clean energy projects would actually end up benefiting and locking in fossil fuel projects instead.

Energy industry representatives are confident the bill will win strong approval in the Senate and eventually make its way to President Donald Trump for signing, said Anne Bradbury, head of oil and natural gas industry trade association American Exploration & Production Council.

"In all my time in Washington, I've never seen every corner of energy working toward the same goal like this,” Bradbury said. “We're viewing this as now or never.”