Joe Biden's jihad against infrastructure
Few people have noticed that the Biden administration is waging a policy jihad against our nation's infrastructure. Still, that's what happened this week when the White House Council on Environmental Quality announced that it's revising this nation's NEPA rules. (NEPA is the acronym for the National Environmental Policy Act.)
NEPA was signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1970. It was "was intended to prevent environmental disasters." These days, "it has become a weapon to block development."
NEPA reform happened during Trump's administration. Unfortunately, Biden's grreen agenda is eliminating Trump's reforms. That isn't productive. It's counterproductive. Then there's this:
Some liberal judges, however, have interpreted NEPA broadly to require the study of effects that indirectly result from a project such as CO2 emissions. Now the Biden Administration is mandating this. CEQ’s new rule will require agencies to calculate the "indirect" and "cumulative impacts" that "can result from individually minor but collectively significant actions taking place over a period of time." This means death by a thousand regulatory cuts for many projects.What thinking goes into signing an infrastructure bill into law, then approve regulations that essentially gut the infrastructure bill? This isn't funny: Those supposedly-ready jobs weren't shovel-ready because of NEPA's regulations. President Trump tried restoring NEPA to its original intent. Joe Biden just weaponized NEPA to please the environmental activist wing of the Democrat Party ahead of the midterm election.
Each time Biden makes a play to appease his base, though, he motivates independents to vote for Republicans this November. This won't end well for Democrats.
The rule’s obvious intent is to make it harder to build pipelines, roads and other infrastructure that would enable more U.S. oil and gas production, even as the Administration makes phony gestures to reduce energy prices. Last Friday the Administration announced it would comply with a court order to hold oil and gas lease sales on public land. Those leases won’t matter if energy companies can’t get federal permits for rights-of-way.Biden apparently is intent on making gestures so he can say he's doing something to lower gas prices. That isn't enough because families want real relief at the pump. Think of it this way -- people don't want the Administration working on inflation. Families want the Administration to fix inflation.
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