John Tierney: “Colleagues, this is the final amendment to the bill, and, as you know, it will not kill the bill. It will not send it…”

“Colleagues, this is the final amendment to the bill, and, as you know, it will not kill the bill. It will not send it back to committee. If this motion is adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended. And I ask you to consider doing that. Over the last several years, it is my understanding that FERC has approved 69 major natural gas pipelines. They span over 3,000 miles in 30 States with a total capacity of nearly 30 billion cubic feet per day. The Government Accountability Office, the firm that does our research for us, has found that FERC's pipeline permitting is predictable, it is consistent, and it gets pipelines built. For some reason, the underlying bill replaces that existing natural gas permitting process with a process that appears to be arbitrary, unworkable, and a one- size-fits-all approach. The bill would force regulatory agencies to comply with what many believe are unreasonable permitting deadlines--1 year for FERC and 3 months for other permitting agencies--to render decisions on applications no matter how complex they are and potentially before the public risks are fully understood, particularly by our local areas. If the underlying bill didn't attempt to fix an existing permitting process that many, including the pipeline trade association, agree is not broken, then perhaps my amendment wouldn't be necessary.…”