Permitting Reform Is the Last Big Win on the Table. Take It.

Ask what a defeated majority can still accomplish in five weeks and the honest list is short: fund the government, confirm judges, pass the defense bill. But there is one more item that belongs on it — the only major policy change that could plausibly leave this Congress with bipartisan votes and a Republican president’s signature: permitting reform.

The problem is not in dispute anywhere. America takes longer to approve a power line, a pipeline, a mine or a factory than it takes to build one — years of environmental review, followed by years of litigation, for projects everyone agrees are necessary. The costs are concrete: energy that stays expensive because infrastructure cannot get built, jobs that go to countries whose governments can say yes, and — after an election in which energy prices helped sweep a party out of power — voters who have noticed that the country cannot build anything anymore.

The politics, unusually, line up. Democrats need energy projects too: transmission lines for the wind and solar they champion are stuck in the same queues as the pipelines Republicans want. A deal that trades faster review for both — real deadlines for agencies, real limits on open-ended lawsuits, and a presumption that a studied project gets a decision, not a decade — is the rare bill that makes both parties’ own voters better off. Reporting on the lame-duck session puts permitting at the top of the plausible bipartisan list, precisely because the election just taught both parties the price of $4 gasoline.

The conservative case for spending scarce days on it is straightforward. Tax cuts expire and get repealed; executive orders get reversed by the next pen. But a power line built is built, a factory opened stays open, and a permitting system that defaults to deciding changes what every future administration can do. If Republicans want one achievement from this session that will still be standing in ten years, this is the shape of it.

The conservative take: Governing is choosing. Between now and December, the majority can spend its remaining capital on fights that end in vetoes and press releases, or it can pass the one reform that makes America faster, cheaper to power, and harder to hold hostage — with votes from the other side. Take the win. Then go home and campaign on it for two years.