Political Quotes

“I have, together with Senator Heinrich, declared a pause in that permitting reform process, and I want to explain that because the progress had actually been good. We were working toward what I think could have been a very meaningful, very effectual, very bipartisan permitting reform bill. There were fairly new ideas being developed in it--like requiring front-loaded stakeholder engagement so the whole rest of the process, as it goes forward, is accelerated; disciplining the despised-by-me interagency process mechanism that excuses so much executive branch delay and indecision. I was actually pretty pleased with the way the process was going. Off of Rhode Island, we are developing offshore wind. Our offshore wind project, Revolution Wind, had already weathered one stop work order which came out of the blue from the administration. This was a project then with about $4 billion of investment already expended and north of 80 percent complete--a lot of turbines fully complete out there. And that order was without any lawful basis. As a result, the order was challenged in court.”