Joe Manchin’s Permitting Bust – WSJ

Sen. Joe Manchin finally released the legal text of its proposed approval of reforms this week, and what a disappointment. His take-it-or-leave-it proposal includes some minor improvements that benefit renewable energy, but it creates new regulatory risks for fossil fuels, which is the opposite of what he promised.

We say this with regret because we had hoped the West Virginia Democrat would have won more in return for voting to pass his party’s tax hike and climate spending bill. The US economy needs reform to remove regulatory and legal bottlenecks that are delaying projects for years if they are ever built. Mr Manchin has had political clout but the bill shows he traded his vote on the cheap.