KEY VOTE ALERT – SENATE – YES on the Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion Proceed to H.R. 2347, the legislative vehicle for the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA)

Club for Growth urges all Senators to vote YES on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, (H.R 2347). The bill offers the most robust federal permitting reform in generations and would foster a new environment for economic growth and lower energy costs. The results of this vote will be included in the Club for Growth Foundation’s 2026 congressional scorecard.

Federal red tape is a hidden tax on every American who wants to build, hire, or keep the lights on at an affordable price. For decades, Washington’s permitting system has let a single lawsuit strangle pipelines, power lines, mines, and factories that had already cleared every review. Costs climb, capital moves overseas, and the administrative state decides what gets built. BAAJA puts that machinery on a clock, and it does so without new tax credits, renewable mandates, or emissions targets.

The heart of the bill is an end to regulation-through-litigation. The bill sets a 150-day deadline to challenge a federal permit, requires challengers to show a direct injury and to have raised their concerns during the comment period, and makes remand without vacatur the default remedy. A project will no longer die in court while an agency fixes its paperwork.

The bill also rewrites the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rather than nibbling at its edges. It narrows what counts as a “major federal action,” designates a single lead agency, expands categorical exclusions, and lets agencies rely on equivalent state, tribal, and federal reviews instead of duplicating them. Environmental assessments must be finished in one year (instead of indefinitely) and environmental impact statements in two years. States can no longer use Clean Water Act Section 401 certifications to veto projects for reasons unrelated to water quality.

The bill also replaces monopoly with competition in the power grid. It bans the federal right of first refusal that shields incumbent utilities from competitive bidding, requires transmission costs to follow cost causation, and forbids charging customers for lines that bring them no meaningful benefit. Data centers and other large computational loads must pay the full cost of the infrastructure built to serve them, and speculative projects must post nonrefundable security to enter the interconnection queue. Households should not be conscripted to subsidize someone else’s power line. Of course, existing special interests will oppose this provision, but it is necessary for the bill to enhance competition which will reduce costs.

Opponents on the left will claim the bill guts environmental protection, while some on the right will dismiss it as a bipartisan energy deal. Both are wrong. The bill keeps every environmental statute on the books and simply forces agencies to decide on time and stops courts from becoming a permanent veto. And unlike the Biden green-subsidy packages Club for Growth has opposed, this bill does not pick energy winners and losers but instead allows the marketplace to compete.

A vote for S. 5653 is a vote to cut barriers instead of writing checks, to end the litigation veto, and to let Americans build again. Therefore, Club for Growth urges a YES vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2347, the legislative vehicle for BAAJA.