Employ America applauds Senators Capito, Heinrich, Lee, and Whitehouse on the introduction of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, and we urge its passage. 

A vibrant, growing economy depends on cost competitive energy infrastructure as a platform for economic development and prosperity. Wasteful and gratuitous impediments to building that infrastructure ultimately crowd out investment and undermine the affordability and availability of basic energy services. That hurts consumers and families, and needlessly limits the availability of economic opportunities. Moreover, these impediments are often in the form of devices that supplant internal state capacity with unbounded private rights of action and judicial power. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 is hopefully the first of many significant steps towards removing such impediments and a more efficient and informed approach to policymaking. 

The introduced legislation also represents a much-needed pivot in the focus of energy policy efforts. While the production of oil and natural gas production and the deployment of renewables have historically commanded the most attention, America’s energy system is largely short on all of the assets that sit in between those partisan poles. Whether the stated objective for the system is economic development, decarbonization, reliability, or affordability, the rate-limiting factors reside in a different set of capabilities. Lawmakers should be more attentive to the deficit of capacity to refine, process, and transport key resources, place reliable electricity in service quickly, and support resilient manufacturing supply chains. All of these assets and capacities stand to benefit from the passage of this bill. 

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act addresses the threshold set of bottlenecks by beginning to reform relevant permitting processes that make a range of major projects slower, more uncertain, and more expensive to build. Our permitting system creates wasteful uncertainty for developers and governments alike, strangling public and private investment. 

At a moment of intensifying economic and technological competition, the United States needs an energy and industrial strategy capable of supporting investment and prosperity at scale. That means building new markets, deploying public capital, and attracting private investment—but none of those efforts can succeed if projects remain trapped in lengthy and unpredictable permitting and litigation processes.

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