Four senators — Mike Lee of Utah, Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee; Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee; Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the Energy Committee's top Democrat; and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the Environment and Public Works Committee's top Democrat — released a substitute amendment on Saturday to their Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, the energy-permitting bill they first introduced in September.
In their joint statement, the four said the substitute amendment makes clarifying, conforming and technical edits to reflect feedback received since the bill's introduction, preserves its foundation, and makes targeted changes to build further support. "We have spent months working across party lines on both sides of Capitol Hill and with President Trump to deliver permitting reform that makes it easier to build in America," they said, adding that the bill will help lower energy costs, strengthen Tribal consultation and create more good-paying jobs.
Under the revised text, developers of large transmission lines of 345 kilovolts and above must spend a year seeking state approval before they can turn to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's federal siting backstop. The bill's data-center rule is unchanged: a new data center of 20 megawatts or more pays the full cost of the grid service it needs, and that cost cannot be passed on to other customers. The amendment also adds a Data Center Community Assistance Program at the Department of Energy to give local communities technical information and help, gives courts more room to unwind permits, and removes two provisions that Tribal groups had fought.
The Senate is scheduled to vote Monday on cloture, and the bill needs 60 votes to advance, so it cannot move forward without Democratic support. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said he will not rubber-stamp the bill as written, and the environmental group Friends of the Earth says the substitute leaves the bill's worst provisions in place.
For ordinary households, the promise in the bill is twofold: the data-center rule is written so the cost of powering the fast-growing data centers lands on the companies that build them, not on families' electricity bills, and faster permitting is meant to get more power lines, pipelines and energy projects built sooner — which the sponsors say will lower energy costs and create good-paying construction jobs across the country.
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