What the Debt Ceiling Bill Means for the Outdoors
Photo credit: Dane Deaner. Yosemite National Park.
Congress recently passed a debt ceiling bill which included some provisions that will affect conservation and recreation.
If you’ve been following political news, you’ll know that House lawmakers demanded that must-pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling (needed to avoid economic catastrophe) be coupled with other legislation. Among other things, this legislation aimed to increase oil and gas development, roll back parts of the National Environmental Policy Act (a key environmental safeguard that also ensures a robust public process), cut funding for federal agencies, and roll back parts of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Last week, the debt ceiling negotiations came to a conclusion when Congress passed (and the President signed) a bill to raise the debt ceiling through January 2025, which also includes some pared down provisions of the original House proposal.
The outdoor recreation community—and many others—have been working to protect climate progress, secure needed funding for public lands, and prevent attacks on landmark environmental laws. The original House debt ceiling bill—the Limit, Save, and Grow Act—included some really troubling giveaways to the oil and gas industry and attacks on NEPA and the Clean Water Act, and we were disturbed to see some members of Congress using the debt ceiling negotiations as leverage for these ideas.
Thousands of you reached out to your members of Congress in the past few months asking them not to put climate progress on the line. This made a significant difference for what ultimately ended up in the final negotiations, and we can’t thank you enough: it's not great, but could have been a lot worse.
The negotiated bill—the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023—includes a list of changes to the energy permitting process that narrow the scope of NEPA for fossil fuel projects without doing anything meaningful to scale up the transmission infrastructure needed to meet clean energy goals. The bill would also approve the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a controversial natural gas pipeline in the Central Appalachians that runs through some important recreation sites, including the Gauley River. Perhaps just as upsetting as the substance of the bill was how it was developed: not through the normal legislative process, but as a concession to a threat from one party to allow a default on our country's debt obligations.
Looking on the brighter side, the permitting reforms included in the final bill exclude many of the more noxious proposals found in H.R. 1, such as reducing already-weak protections for hardrock mining on public lands or gutting the Clean Water Act. Furthermore, the final bill does not repeal any of the landmark climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (as House leadership had proposed) and the spending cuts included in the bill for domestic programs like public lands set funding at levels not-to-far-off from what might have been achieved through the regular appropriations process in a divided government.
Outdoor recreation voices will continue to be important as we expect that Congress will continue to negotiate more on permitting reform, oil and gas reform, and mining reform. We will be sure to keep you updated when there are key opportunities to take action, protect the climate, defend key environmental laws, and ensure that outdoor recreation and landscape conservation remain priorities for Congress.