Kevin McCarthy, Joe Biden, Joe Manchin secure permitting for Mountain Valley Pipeline

To hear Sen. Joe Manchin tell it, you'd think that Sen. Manchin worked exclusively with Speaker Kevin McCarthy to get final approval of the permits needed to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline through West Virginia to Virginia.

According to Sen. Manchin's statement, "Last summer, I introduced legislation to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I am pleased Speaker McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the MVP to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia. I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line."

That doesn't mean everyone's happy with this pipeline project. According to the Washington Post article, "the Sierra Club on Monday called for Congress to reject it, as did Sen. Tim Kaine (D) from Virginia, where both U.S. senators have opposed the pipeline project. Kaine said Monday he planned to propose an amendment to strip the pipeline provisions from the bill."

The Sierra Club isn't happy, either:

"Any deal that attempts to expedite the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline, that rolls back bedrock environmental protections, and makes life harder for workers and families already struggling is a bad deal for the country," the Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement.

One of the subtle-but-important provisions in the new-and-improved version of the Limit, Save, Grow Act is the reform of the National Environmental Policy Act, aka NEPA. While passage of the debt limit bill will require the Army to grant the permits to the Mountain Valley Pipeline within 21 days of signing of the bill, it doesn't push NEPA reform across the finish line. Still, this is a victory from Sen. Manchin, Sen. Moore-Capito and Speaker McCarthy:

The good news is that Joe Biden and Speaker McCarthy plan to work on additional permitting reform after the debt ceiling bill is signed into law:

Permitting reform proved to be a major sticking point during deliberations. Although some reform provisions wound up in the final debt ceiling agreement, McCarthy contends that there's more to do.

"We will continue working with [the White House] and with Democrats across the way because we need energy — all forms of energy, especially for our grid to double in the next future. And so we made a commitment that we're not stopping now. And that would also deal with transmission. It would deal with pipelines and others," he said.

NEPA reform won't just benefit pipeline construction. It will streamline the red tape that's getting in the way of highway construction, solar- and wind-farm construction and other types of infrastructure construction, too.