As the first half of 2026 comes to a close, advocates of permitting reform (including IEC) are ramping up pressure on Congress to act before the end of the term.
IEC hopes to see movement on several key legislative priorities in the time leading up to the 2026 election, including bills passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last December that are still stuck in Senate committees.
“The window for bipartisan action may remain open into the 120th Congress, but many things could change next year,” said Ben Brubeck, IEC’s lobbyist. “Even if the Republicans hold both chambers, bills will still have to be reintroduced and coalitions reassembled with new members, which will cost valuable time.”
The PERMIT Act (H.R. 3898) passed the House in December 2025 and was referred to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW). The bill, sponsored by Mike Collins (R-GA), aims to revise the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) to exclude several categories of non-navigable spaces, opening up these areas to development.
The SPEED Act (H.R. 4776), also passed by the House in December 2025 and also referred to the Senate EPW Committee, streamlines the permitting process set out in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Cosponsored by 14 legislators including an even split of Republicans and Democrats, this bipartisan legislation aims to eliminate the need for NEPA review where a qualifying state or local review has already cleared a building project. It also narrows the list of cases that trigger the NEPA process and limits judicial review of such cases.
While IEC’s primary focus is on these two bills, there are others with impacts on permitting reform in different stages of the legislative process.
Notably, a housing bill that includes permitting reform provisions passed by veto-proof margins in both Houses of Congress – the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, just became law after ten days of no action from the White House. This bill contains a number of provisions designed to increase the supply of housing in the United States with no new appropriations in the current fiscal year.
These provisions include an incentive for municipalities to create catalogs of standard, pre-approved housing designs for developers to choose from, exemptions from NEPA review for certain projects, and a program to reward local governments for increasing housing supply through the use of several tactics, including streamlined permitting.
Other permitting reform measures include the CERTAIN Act (H.R. 8308), sponsored by Scott Peters (D-CA) and cosponsored by Gabe Evans (R-CO). This bill addresses the problem of authorizations for federal projects being cancelled by the agency that issued them when a new president takes office by requiring that certain conditions be met before an authorization can be revoked.
Both parties have felt the sting of revoked permits, whether President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline in 2021, or President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop wind and solar power development since he began his second term last year.
“Each party has different energy development goals, and developers are experiencing a kind of whiplash with each change in presidential administrations,” said Jeremy Croft, IEC’s senior manager of government affairs. “A goal of CERTAIN is to mitigate this and get energy development moving again.”
The CERTAIN Act has been assigned to the House committees on National Resources, Transportation and Infrastructure, and Energy and Commerce. Despite its bipartisan support, the bill needs to pass committee review and floor votes in both the House and Senate before it reaches the president’s desk, a daunting task with only six months left in the year and four until the 2026 midterm elections.
IEC is monitoring the status of permitting reform legislation and prioritizing action in support of it. You can help by sending a message to your legislators via IEC’s Action Alert.