The Senate is set to hold an initial procedural vote on Monday on a bipartisan infrastructure bill that would speed the approval of natural gas pipelines and clean-energy transmission lines. The measure, known as the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, or Baaja, would also roll back a number of environmental and social protections in the process. President Donald Trump has urged all senators to vote for it.
The 417-page bill was sponsored by two Republicans and two Democrats. Its central aim is to shorten the time needed to permit energy infrastructure, a process that supporters argue has slowed the construction of projects regardless of their energy source. The trade-off built into the text has split the climate community. Some environmental and tribal advocates are urging Democrats to slow the bill down, while others see faster permitting as a route to building new clean power capacity. The same tension runs through the wider debate: climate advocates are divided over whether accepting weaker protections is worth the faster construction of transmission lines that clean energy depends on.
The vote comes only days after Democrats regained control of the Senate in the midterm elections. The result was widely read as a repudiation of Trump and of congressional Republicans. Democrats are due to take control of Congress in January, and they have said they intend to push clean energy as a way to tackle rising energy costs for households. That message places the permitting bill at the intersection of two political questions: how quickly energy infrastructure gets built, and who sets the terms for it. Trump, for his part, has said he will aggressively use his veto power against legislation he opposes.
It remains unclear how Monday's procedural vote will turn out. The final text of the bill and whether it will pass are also unresolved, and it is not yet known whether Democratic leaders will back the measure or seek to delay it. Those questions will determine whether the bill advances past its first hurdle and how much of its environmental framework survives the legislative process. For now, the Senate's decision on whether to begin debate will offer the first clear signal of how the bill's bipartisan backers and its critics are positioned.