Senate permitting reform negotiators have pointed to the coming August recess as a deadline for a deal — at least an initial product. That goal may be slipping.
With President Donald Trump’s animus toward renewable energy showing little signs of abating, Democratic negotiators are driving a hard bargain, pressing for significant measures to boost transmission and restrain the administration’s power to cancel approved energy projects.
“They’ve made some progress,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), an Energy and Natural Resources Committee member who caucuses with Democrats, told POLITICO. “But the problem is until the administration takes their thumb off the scale, we’re not going to be able to do it.”
That has some Republicans growing anxious they won’t be able to reach a deal with Democrats in the coming weeks. The Senate is scheduled to be in recess starting the second week of August.
