Hoeven Outlines Need for Regulatory Relief to Bring Down Inflation

Statement

At a press conference today, Senator John Hoeven outlined the need for regulatory relief to help the nation produce more energy here at home, alleviate supply chain constraints and bring down inflation. To this end, the senator is pushing back on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulation revisions announced by the Biden administration earlier this year.

During the Trump administration, Hoeven supported efforts to modernize and streamline regulations under NEPA, helping to prevent delays and reduce costs for infrastructure projects. The Biden administration recently reversed these important reforms and enacted rules that add new, onerous requirements to the federal permitting process, causing further delays for vital, good-paying infrastructure projects that would help put Americans back to work. Accordingly, Hoeven joined his Senate colleagues, led by Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), in introducing a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify Biden's NEPA revisions.

"This is about America's ability to build things. If we have a NEPA permit process that takes four to five years, that not only delays a project, but it also drives up the cost and sometimes means we don't build that infrastructure at all," said Hoeven. "Every day, Americans are suffering from high energy prices and skyrocketing inflation, and the Biden administration is making it harder to build the infrastructure we need to alleviate supply chain bottlenecks, get goods like energy to market and bring down inflation.

"The Biden administration is doing the opposite of what our nation needs. They're raising taxes and increasing regulations and spending more, which just drives inflation higher. Inflation is the cruelest tax of all, because it hits the lowest income people the hardest. Now, we have stagflation, which we haven't seen in 40 years.

"A good example is the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, which moves a half a million barrels of the highest quality light, sweet crude to market, and we don't have to go to our adversaries to get it. We produce it here at home. This pipeline has been under NEPA review for five years, and it's still in the process. If they shut it down, that's less oil that we have at the pump, driving prices higher.

"The Biden administration's revisions to NEPA are a clear example of the administration making these problems worse, and I hope our colleagues join us in passing this CRA to knock down these harmful regulations. We need to recognize that, under these rules, environmental reviews will take longer, they will cost more and they will kill projects that we need right now."

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