Episode 917: Chairman Bruce Westerman on the SPEED Act

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Newt’s World – Episode 917: Chairman Bruce Westerman on the SPEED Act

Date: December 4, 2025
Host: Newt Gingrich (Gingrich 360)
Guest: Congressman Bruce Westerman (Chairman, House Committee on Natural Resources)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Newt Gingrich interviews Congressman Bruce Westerman about the bipartisan SPEED Act (Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act). They discuss the urgent need for permitting reform in the U.S., its connection to economic development, national security, energy affordability, and America’s competitiveness—particularly against countries like China. The conversation emphasizes the impact of outdated and over-complicated environmental regulations, and the potential for the SPEED Act to streamline the permitting process across industries ranging from infrastructure to artificial intelligence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background on NEPA and Permitting Problems

• The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted over 50 years ago, was intended to ensure environmental consideration in federal projects, but has become an obstacle preventing or delaying infrastructure, energy, and resource projects.

  • “NEPA’s become this massive kind of a spider web... where you get in these continuous do loops and you can’t get out.”
    — Bruce Westerman [04:25]

• Average federal permitting under NEPA takes 4-5 years, and can take decades for projects like mining, leading to U.S. dependence on countries like China for critical minerals.

  • “The National Mining association says it takes 29 years from the time you find a resource until you’re producing that resource in a mine.”
    — Bruce Westerman [05:10]

2. Economic and Strategic Consequences

• The complexity and delays caused by NEPA directly raise costs for consumers and discourage domestic and foreign investment.

• Impact on energy: The inability to quickly permit new energy projects puts the U.S. at a disadvantage as demand for electricity grows (especially due to AI and data centers).

  • “…if we want to reshore things here in America, we’re going to need more electricity for manufacturing. And we’re really behind the eight ball…”
    — Bruce Westerman [06:51]

• National security risk: U.S. permitting delays impact the nation’s ability to compete technologically and militarily and to access critical resources.

3. The SPEED Act – Key Reforms

• Streamlines the federal permitting process; aims for a “one-stop shop” by consolidating regulatory authority and reducing duplicity.
  • “We want to streamline it, have one person or one group in charge and then take down roadblocks and obstacles… to make it a streamlined process.”
    — Bruce Westerman [10:02]
• Codifies that NEPA is a procedural, not outcome-dictating, statute—as established by the Supreme Court.
• Ensures states have a stronger role.
• Addresses delays by setting firm timelines for reviews and closing loopholes used by bureaucracies to slow-walk permits.

4. Bipartisan & Economic Impact

• The SPEED Act was developed over 8 years, and its passage requires broad bipartisan support. There is growing understanding on both sides that outdated permitting restricts progress for infrastructure, the environment, and the economy:
  • “We’ve built a huge amount of momentum… there’s a lot of conversations taking place on how do we get the Speed Act not only out of the House, but through the Senate and signed into law.”
    — Bruce Westerman [19:47]
• Cumulative economic cost of permitting delays is immense:
  • “McKinsey… said that it’s costing Americans $2.7 trillion for these public infrastructure projects that are held up in permitting.”
    — Bruce Westerman [18:23]
• Westerman cites staggering value-add potential if U.S. can efficiently process its own resources: $120B in material could become $3.7T in economic activity and jobs.
  • “…for every 1% we increase the labor participation rate, we grow the economy a trillion dollars.”
    — Bruce Westerman [22:00]

5. Case Studies and Examples

• Mountain Valley Pipeline: Explicitly legislated but still delayed for years due to regulatory and legal obstacles.
  • “It was some of the most explicit legislation that I’ve ever seen. It was almost like it came from scripture. But… nothing shall impede its development. Yet, obstacles prevailed.”
    — Bruce Westerman [13:42]
• State Differences: Pennsylvania vs. New York on shale development—regulation in NY leads to missed economic opportunity.
  • “The amount to which New York has itself made people poor with that kind of regulation is just, I think, crazy.”
    — Newt Gingrich [15:05]
• Atlanta Airport Runway: Took 11 years—only 18 months to construct, but 9.5 years to permit. [25:01]
• Military Readiness: Permits delayed redevelopment of strategic Pacific airfield for the U.S. military, while China rapidly constructs military infrastructure with no such barriers.
  • “The Chinese Communist Party understand our environmental laws better than we do.”
    — Bruce Westerman [26:54]
• Air Traffic Control: $12B in approved funding can’t be used promptly for upgrades—held up by permitting to lay fiber optics.
  • “They can’t get the fiber optics cables to the towers because of the NEPA permitting process.”
    — Bruce Westerman [30:19]

6. Permitting as an Affordability Issue

• Overregulation and permitting delays drive hidden costs into everything from energy to food prices, affecting all Americans.
• The reforms could make U.S. energy, infrastructure, and everyday goods more affordable while also strengthening national security and environmental outcomes.
  • “…if the cost for energy rises, the cost for everything rises.”
    — Bruce Westerman [33:50]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you can’t build what you dream, then someday we’re going to lose that innovative advantage.”
  — Bruce Westerman [11:41]
• “People would love to invest in our country… But nobody’s going to invest if they can’t get a return…”
  — Bruce Westerman [08:53]
• “This bill will not get signed into law without bipartisan votes.”
  — Bruce Westerman [19:47]
• “…what we found out is that bureaucrats said, okay, we’ll follow that one year and two year guideline. There’s no requirements on how long we can delay before we actually start the process.”
  — Bruce Westerman [16:18]
• “…the far left seems like they just don’t want to build here in our country and they’re using the permitting process to stop that.”
  — Bruce Westerman [10:02]
• “Anybody who’s ever served in Congress has their Corps of Engineers horror story that they’ve dealt with, and it’s happening every day.”
  — Bruce Westerman [28:49]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:25] – History and consequences of NEPA
• [06:51] – U.S. vs. China in construction & energy
• [08:04] – U.S. competitiveness and AI; strategic risk
• [10:02] – SPEED Act’s “one-stop shop” approach
• [13:42] – Mountain Valley pipeline case study
• [15:05] – Impact of state regulations on economic opportunity
• [18:23] – $2.7 trillion cost of infrastructure delays
• [19:37] – Eight-year journey and bipartisan process
• [22:00] – Economic value of accelerating development
• [26:54] – Military/national security consequences
• [30:19] – Air traffic control upgrades blocked by permitting delays
• [33:50] – Permitting’s hidden cost to affordability and everyday life

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Tone & Style

The conversation is both practical and urgent, driven by Westerman’s background as an engineer and policymaker, and Gingrich’s perspective as a historian and former Speaker. Both call out bureaucratic obstacles while emphasizing the opportunities of bipartisan reform. The tone is earnest, at times exasperated by government inefficiency, but ultimately optimistic about the prospects for common-sense change.

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Conclusion

Congressman Westerman and Newt Gingrich make a compelling case that permitting reform is a rare bipartisan opportunity to improve America’s economic prospects, national security, and affordability for average citizens. Listeners are encouraged to learn more via Westerman’s office (westerman.house.gov) and to frame permitting reform as a nonpartisan path toward a more prosperous, innovative, and competitive United States.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Newt Gingrich]

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[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

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[Newt Gingrich]

On this episode of Newt's World Congressman Bruce Westerman represents Arkansas's 4th congressional district in the U.S. house of Representatives, where he serves on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and as Chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources. Prior to serving in Congress, Chairman Westerman worked for 22 years at mid South Engineering in Hot Springs. He served as a board member for the Fountain Lake School District and was later elected to two terms in the Arkansas General assembly, where he was the state's first Republican House Majority Leader since Reconstruction. He's joining me today to discuss bipartisan legislation known as the SPEED act, which stands for Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act.

Bruce, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newts World.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's great to be on Newts World, and I'm a fan of your podcast and I found out about it through my my quest to do permitting reform. I had read a book by a guy named Philip Howard talking about how we've got to save America's can do, and I Was curious if he had done any podcast and I found that you had him on a podcast. So appreciate what you do and the way you highlight important issues and get the word out and obviously all the service that you've given to our country and there with your wife in Switzerland.

[Newt Gingrich]

Now you mention Howard. He's really a smart guy. I'm delighted that you've connected with him.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Well, I've not connected with him. I've just read his book and I feel like I've connected with him and listened to him on your podcast.

[Newt Gingrich]

I'm sure he'd be delighted to come and visit because he has a genuine passion for trying to get us out of the bureaucracy and back to being effective. Now you've intrigued me because with all of the talking we have going on right now about affordability, it really hit me that a lot of the affordability problems come directly out of the way in which big government socialism favors more and more regulations, makes it harder and harder to get anything done, and artificially raises the cost from what it would have been 30 or 40 years ago. And you've said the National Environmental Policy Act, I'm quoting you now, is a more than half century old permitting process that is overdue for a tune up. If we could start at the basics because most of us really don't have the kind of knowledge you do. What was the act originally supposed to do back when they first passed it?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

This was in the late 60s, early 70s when we started putting a lot more emphasis on the environment. And a lot of laws passed in. You had the Clean Water act, the Clean Air act, you had the Endangered Species act, followed by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, A lot of underlying statutes that were specifically put in place to help clean up the environment. There were good laws, a lot of good things came from that. But over the years they've been weaponized. And NEPA was kind of the first environmental law. And it was put in place as a process to analyze things before we got stuff like the Clean Air act and the Clean Water Act. And over time, NEPA's become this massive kind of a spider web, if you think of it in a flowchart, where you get in these continuous do loops and you can't get out. And as a result, on average, it takes four to five years to get a permit through nepa. And when you're talking about mining, you can measure it in decades. The National Mining association says it takes 29 years from the time you find a resource until you're producing that resource in a mine. In the United States. And you know what that's led to? It's led to China dominating critical minerals and rare earth. And I'm so glad you mentioned affordability because this bureaucratic morass that's been created by NEPA has created costs that they're not seen out in the open. They're costs that go into producing things that consumers ultimately pay for. And they don't realize that these costs are there. NEPA affects everything really with a federal nexus. Whether you're trying to build a road, a bridge, build a navigable waterway or a port or an airport, even managing our forest, developing energy projects, pipelines, transmission lines. There's probably not any one issue that affects every American more than nepa, other than tax policy that gets everyone pretty much. But some way or another, the NEPA process affects all Americans.

[Newt Gingrich]

Isn't it fair to say that unless we can reform this, we will never be able to compete with China because they can actually go out and build something, whereas we start with lawyers and we have to litigate for years before we build anything.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

They are building things right now at a very rapid pace. They're building coal fired plants at over 100 gigawatts a year. The last coal fired plant built in the United States was in my district in 2010. And we've shut a lot of coal plants down, but China's building one equivalent to that plant in my district about every two days, which is hard to get your mind around. And you know, we've got this huge demand for electricity for AI and data. And also if we want to reshore things here in America, we're going to need more electricity for manufacturing. And we're really behind the eight ball without the opportunity to build things like we used to be able to build things here in this country. So getting the permitting right is the first step in being able to build in America again and to win the AI battle and critical minerals and rare earths and all of that good stuff.

[Newt Gingrich]

Is it accurate to say that unless we can cut through the red tape that we have a real danger of losing all in artificial intelligence, not because of the scientists, but because of the base electricity you need in order to be able to run those kind of very complicated systems?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Exactly. And we can't lose that race. It's a national security issue when you think about AI. So what's going to happen if we don't build more generation and transmission is the AI companies are going to be competing with residents and commercial users, so you're going to have not enough supply and increased demand. So we know that means the price goes up. So as we talk about affordability, it's crucial that we allow new generation and transmission to be built so that we're not increasing prices and making ourselves in short supply on electricity. And the data companies are willing to fund these projects, but they just have to be able to build them.

[Newt Gingrich]

The money can sit in the bank, but if you don't have the bureaucracy signing off, you're not going to get it out of the bank.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Right. And what NEPA has done and the abuse of our other environmental laws, it's put a wet blanket on investments in our country. People would love to invest in our country. Everywhere I travel recently, countries are saying we would like to invest in America because they know it's a good investment. But nobody's going to invest if they can't get a return on that money. And they've seen examples of like the Keystone pipeline where billions of dollars were spent and a drop of oil never went through that pipeline. There's a mine in Arizona that there's been $2 billion spent on it and they've never mined an ounce of copper out of it. The process has stopped right now because of an injunction through the NEPA process. And that's what we're trying to fix with permitting reform is to make it where people will have certainty that they can go through the process in a timely manner, get their permit and build things.

[Newt Gingrich]

And don't you also almost have to get to like a one stop at a place where you can shop because otherwise you can end up with so many different regulators with so many different kind of rules that it just becomes mindless.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

That's correct. And we do that in the SPEED act as well. And we also give states a better seat at the table because we get a lot of duplicity on top of having multiple federal agencies in charge. So we want to streamline it, have one person or one group in charge and then take down roadblocks and obstacles that have been added on to NEPA throughout the years. You know, there was this seven counties decision out of the Supreme Court for a case in Utah where the Supreme Court said in a unanimous decision that NEPA is a process, it's a procedural statute, it cannot dictate outcomes. So we're going to codify that in the SPEED act and make it a stream streamlined process. I continue, we will have bettered environmental conditions because we can permit quickly and do things that are better for the environment by building them here in America. I hate to say the left because this is a bipartisan bill. But the far left seems like they just don't want to build here in our country and they're using the permitting process to stop that. But if you truly care about the environment, you would want a process that allowed you to develop new kinds of energy, that allowed you to take care of our forest and our infrastructure in a way that is better for the environment in the long run.

[Newt Gingrich]

Isn't it fair to say that any kind of regulatory process which discourages investment in the US and leads them to occur in China or in a third world country is almost guaranteed to be more environmentally destructive than if you actually did it right here in the United States?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Without question, we do things cleaner, safer, healthier and more efficiently than anybody else in the world. When we unleash American innovation and we're allowed to do that, it not only puts a wet blanket on investments, it puts a wet blanket on innovation. That's been our edge in this country for so long that we've been able to innovate and stay ahead of the curve. But if you can't build what you dream, then someday we're going to lose that innovative advantage.

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[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

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[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

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[Newt Gingrich]

One of the examples by now you know well is the effort to build a 300 mile pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia. Can you talk just a little bit about it? It's sort of crazy how these things balloon and cost.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Yeah, that's the Mountain Valley pipeline and that was a provision that Joe Manchin basically got spelled out in the. I guess that was in the IRA or the ija. One of those bills was passed during the Obama administration and it was some of the most explicit legislation that I've ever seen. It was almost like it came from scripture. Thou shalt build a pipeline and it shall go through this area and nothing shall impede its, its development. But you think about natural gas is one of the cleanest forms of energy that we have. My co sponsor on the bill, Jared golden, the Democrat from Maine, one of his main concerns is they're burning heating oil in Maine. And, and he even came to me and asked if I could help him get a LNG import facility in Maine because they're blocking pipelines going through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York. And all he wants is affordable clean energy for his constituents. But you cannot get a pipeline permitted up through that area. And people think of the Permian Basin in Texas and Alaska, but the largest deposit of natural gas in the planet is in the Marcellus and Utica Shale there in Penn, Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio. It's right there available for the Northeast. But if you can't get a pipeline to use it, it's of no use.

[Newt Gingrich]

To you, say a farmer, if you have two cousins who own farms and one of them is in Pennsylvania and the other is 20 miles away in New York because New York will not allow them to develop the Marcellus Shale. So the cousin who lives in Pennsylvania is making a tremendous amount of money out of this product which is right there on his land. The exact same product 20 miles away. His cousin cannot get to it because the state government, I mean the amount to which New York has itself made people poor with that kind of regulation is just, I think, crazy.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

I don't think that's what our founders were dreaming about 250 years ago.

[Newt Gingrich]

I don't think that George Washington, who was very big on development, would have understood the current attitudes. Let me ask you though, we have made some reforms that you've been involved in. And as I understand it, the Fiscal Responsibility act of 2023 actually made some significant changes in the National Environmental Policy Act. Can you sort of explain the progress we have made?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Yeah, so that was the famous budget cat deal when Speaker McCarthy was Speaker of the House. And we got some concessions on putting timelines, on doing something called an environmental analysis. We said that could only be 100 pages in one year or an environmental impact statement. So that could be 200 pages or two years, which never really got implemented during the Biden administration. But what we found out is that the bureaucrats said, okay, we'll follow that one year and two year guideline. There's no requirements on how long we can delay before we actually start the process. So they're delaying months and years before they ever start the time clock. And then once they get the decision, they'll delay issuing the permit. So we're fixing that in the Speed Act. A lot of this should just be common sense, and it's frustrating that you have to pass laws in Congress to try to outthink what the bureaucracy is going to do. But I think we've got them finally in the corner on this one. If we can get the Speed act passed.

[Newt Gingrich]

It strikes me that you do have some people who went into government for the purposes of stopping everything, not for the purpose of helping it.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

And the system's rigged for people who want to stop something. It's very difficult to build things, but if you got enough money and some lawyers, you can stop just about anything in our country. I came from a background where I did engineering work for 20 or 25 years. I understand the frustrations of the people that are really focused every day, working hard, trying to build something. And then all of a sudden it's like this curveball comes out of left field that nobody was expecting. And it's somebody that shouldn't even be involved in the process is saying, well, you got to do it this way or we've got to delay. And the cost just goes through the roof. McKinsey put out a report in July of this year looking at just public infrastructure projects. And they looked at a four year window because these projects, public infrastructure, takes around six years to get a permit. But they analyzed the four year window and they said that it's costing Americans $2.7 trillion for these public infrastructure projects that are held up in permitting. And part of that's the extra cost of doing the permits. A big part of it is the cost that the project takes on because it's being delayed and you have to mobilize and demobilize and all of that. But then you've got this big opportunity cost that's lost because you don't have a bridge replaced and you've got traffic congested. And again, these are hidden costs that every American's paying. And they don't realize that at the root of that is the permitting laws.

[Newt Gingrich]

I think this is interesting for the average citizen to realize when you get to legislation that is this big and this complicated, it takes time to think it through, to study it, to put together the right language, to make sure you have hearings where people can come in and help you improve it. How long have you personally been Working on the Speed act.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

The policy in the Speed Act. I've been working on it for eight years.

[Newt Gingrich]

It's complicated to build a bridge. It's complicated to write the law to improve regulations for building the bridge.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Exactly. And in this instance, we've got to have 60 votes in the Senate, so it has to be bipartisan. This bill will not get signed into law without bipartisan votes. So we've got to work with our colleagues across the aisle that will work with us on it. We've actually built a great coalition with our Democrat co sponsors and we've got letters of Support from all 50 states and over 230 different letters from organizations that range from energy companies to data centers to people in construction to utilities. It's a wide variety of people who realize just how important permitting reform is. So we've built a huge amount of momentum and there's a lot of conversations taking place on how do we get the SPEED act not only out of the House, but through the Senate and signed into law.

[Newt Gingrich]

And do you have a sense that you'll be able to get it done in this Congress?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Yeah, we plan to get the bill to the Senate before the end of the year and the Senate is working on their version of permitting reform as well. Having been the speaker of the House, you understand there's only so much we can do. We can give them the bill and then you've got to deal with the Senate, but you've got to take it one step at a time. But we are trying to work with the Senate and with the administration to make sure that we've got all of our bases covered in the bill that we send over.

[Newt Gingrich]

I think we have a three part process I've begun to work on about affordability. And one part of it is the things that exist in the current system that make everything less affordable. You can produce out of your committee trillions of dollars that we could take out of current costs over the next decade that would clearly make America more affordable. I mean, does that sound about right?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

And more when you think about if we start using our resources and building here. So the USGS US Geological Survey, they do a report every year on material that's mined and processed in the United States. And they've been doing this for a long time. Currently we produce about $120 billion worth of raw material and recycled material that's net of imports and exports. When that material gets processed into metals or the next product, this includes aggregates, everything that you mine, it's worth almost a trillion Dollars. So you take $120 billion worth of raw material, you process it and refine it, and you've got a trillion dollars of material. You put that into the economy, and it's worth $3.7 trillion to our GDP. So you take $120 billion of raw material, and it has a $3.7 trillion impact in our economy. You know this over time, the federal tax revenue runs about 15 or 16% of the GDP. So if you grow the economy by a trillion dollars, you're adding another $150 billion of revenue to the budget to help reduce the deficit. You're also employing more people. For every 1%. We increase the labor participation rate, we grow the economy a trillion dollars. So you've got all these other benefits. On top of having better national security, you get better jobs, a stronger economy, and it's just crazy that we've not been doing more of this all along.

[Newt Gingrich]

Do you find a substantial number of Democrats understand the importance of this kind of economic development and actually the national security crisis that we're going to be in, both in terms of mining key things and in terms of energy production for artificial intelligence. Is there a growing bipartisan awareness of how real this is?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

There is, and we have to take advantage of that while we can. The advent of data and AI and the realization of how much energy it's going to take for that, I think has gotten everybody's attention on both sides of the aisle. And also understanding the impacts that can have on energy affordability, if you've got all this new consumption taking place and you're not able to supply it, that's a big issue. The other thing is, in the Inflation Reduction act, the Democrats approved a lot of projects that they found out they couldn't get their projects permitted either. It kind of brought a dose of reality to everyone that if you want to build in our country, you can't do it under the current permitting system. So I think people are realizing the situation we're in, and it has created a bipartisan effort to get permitting reform done.

[Newt Gingrich]

Yeah, I saw a study that said that on the expansion of the New York subway, that it would cost 8 to 10 times what the same expansion would cost in London or Paris.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Yeah, I think Philip Howard actually mentioned that in his book, talking about the original construction and how much it would cost today. There's so many examples. I know you're from Georgia. The last Runway at the Atlanta airport. It took 11 years to build it. It actually only took 18 months to build it. But it took nine and a half years to get the permit to build it. It's just crazy stuff like that.

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[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

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[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

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[Newt Gingrich]

Won't this also have a significant impact both the War Department and NASA on making it faster to do the kind of construction and the kind of things they need to get done?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Absolutely. You know, I've traveled around and talked to military commanders and I'll never forget a guy out in the Pacific telling me that the Chinese Communist Party understand our environmental laws better than we do. And at the time, China was building an island on a coral reef. Like hauling big rocks out in the ocean and dumping them on a coral reef to build an island to put military assets on. We were trying to redevelop a site on Tinian where the bombers took off with the atomic bombs. That was one of the largest airfields in the world back in World War II and had grown up in the jungle. And the military wanted to go in and redevelop a little piece of that total dead end. They could not get the permits to go in and redevelop this site that was strategic to our national security. Yeah, it has a major impact on Department of War. Talk about the Corps of Engineers and the projects that they do. It creates a tremendous additional cost for government funded infrastructure.

[Newt Gingrich]

People really often don't realize that the original purpose of creating West Point was to produce engineers. Robert E. Lee, for example, spent part of his early career developing the port at St. Louis. And nowadays in 2012, they were building a second wider Panama Canal. And the study for whether or not you could improve the Charleston harbor to take the new larger ships was going to take longer to study than it was going to take them to build the entire brand New canal. They would have ships that could not come into Charleston because it'd be too big. And the Corps literally could not get out of the way of all the different regulatory requirements.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Anybody who's ever served in Congress has their Corps of Engineers horror story that they've dealt with, and it's happening every day. These are great people that want to do good work, but there's a problem in the leadership somewhere in the Corps and getting projects approved and getting them done. And we also fund Corps of Engineering projects in a backwards way. Instead of funding the whole project at one time, we fund them on the appropriations process. So they have to build in. Are we going to have to stop and wait for more funding? That whole process needs to be reordered.

[Newt Gingrich]

The Navy figured out years ago, when they buy an aircraft carrier, they structure the contract so that technically, because the Constitution requires annual funding, technically it has to be renewed. But they build in such a prohibitive cost for not renewing that Congress will consistently pay for it. I'm looking at the air traffic control situation, where Secretary Duffy, I think, has a huge challenge. We have not been able to fix the air traffic control system for 40 years because of the point we just made, which is by the time you get to annual appropriations, you get to the federal bureaucracy, you get to the various opportunities to file lawsuits, to screw up everything, we literally have not been able to modernize the air traffic control system.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

I've been on the Aviation subcommittee, and in the first Trump administration, we looked at updating the air traffic control system. Now, in the reconciliation bill that we did, we put $12 billion in there for the air traffic control system. I was with Secretary Duffy last night, and we were talking about this. You know, what's holding up air traffic control is getting fiber optics cables to the towers, and they can't get the fiber optics cables to the towers because of the NEPA permitting process. They've got $12 billion, and they can't run a new fiber optics line. They're trying to work around that, but it's ridiculous that something so important to safety and to our economy and it's being held up because they can't run fiber to control towers.

[Newt Gingrich]

When I was speaker, it was so unusual to have the first Republican speaker in 40 years that when we finished the 10 items that were in the contract, CBS gave me a half hour to do sort of a national address. And I actually had a vacuum tube that was part of the air traffic control system that was manufactured in Poland because it was the last factory on the Planet that made these vacuum tubes and we had not been able. No, I think we've since gotten away from them, but at the time, we literally had not been able to get out of vacuum tubes.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

I remember seeing that. Great job.

[Newt Gingrich]

Look, with your leadership, I think this is a big deal. Now, is the act in the Senate also called the Speed Act?

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

No, there's not a bill that I'm aware of that the Senate's filed yet. They're working on the policy. And I think the Speed act will be the center point of maybe some larger permitting reform. There's some statutes and other committees that aren't in natural resources jurisdiction. You've got Energy and Commerce in the House that has clean air and clean water and ferc, you've got TNR that's got a clean water nexus. And then you get over in the Senate and you got Senate ENR and Senate EPW that has cross jurisdiction. So all those committees are working together. And you know, at some point, a lot of other stuff may get added into the SPEED act to address the biggest and best permitting reform bill that we can get passed and signed into law.

[Newt Gingrich]

So in a real sense, if you look at this, this could become, because of the Title Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development act could be expanded substantially beyond NEPA and still fit within the framework.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Yeah. So I would say if all we can get is nepa, that will be a huge victory. But there's opportunity because there's also some areas that have bipartisan support with things like the Endangered Species act and the Clean Air and the Clean Water act that could kind of some bits and pieces that get sprinkled in with the.

[Newt Gingrich]

Nepa, given the mood that's building in the country. If we can find a way to communicate as an affordability issue how much, for example, your family would be better off in electricity cost or how much you'll be better off just in terms of your county or your state building a highway or fixing a bridge. There are ways to translate all this so it becomes very personal. And what do people realize? This is really about their lives. This isn't just some abstract theory.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Right. It's really intuitive, if you stop and think about it, that if the cost for energy rises, the cost for everything rises. When the Ukraine war started, we saw an increase in input cost for agriculture. And what a lot of people didn't realize was that was directly related to the fact that there was so much nitrogen fertilizer that's made in the Ukraine and the cost of gas went up there. And natural gas is the main ingredient in fertilizer. And fertilizer is a globally traded commodity. So even though we've got a lot of natural gas in the US we don't have a lot of fertilizer plants. And you had fertilizer shortages that drove up ag cost and everything in ag. The fertilizer that you put on the farmland is like a base input cost for chickens and pork and beef because they end up eating the crops you grow. So when you have a constraint on supply of energy and the things that are made from that energy, it percolates throughout the whole supply chain. And that can be both ways. You can get positive effects or negative effects. If you get those costs low and you get an abundance, your affordability is going to be much better. And plus you're going to have better jobs.

[Newt Gingrich]

I really want to congratulate you. This is a hard topic. It's a topic a lot of people have spent years working on. You have brought it together into a serious reform bill which could have an enormous impact on our national security, on our economic growth, on the cost of energy, on our ability to do artificial intelligence. So, Bruce, I think the work you're doing is sort of Congress at its best, positive, thoughtful, bipartisan, with a huge impact in the real world. I want to thank you for joining me and I want to let our listeners know they can find out more about the work you're doing by visiting your [e-mail].

Thank you very much, Newt.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

It's been great to be with you. And I would add to that list we're going to do more to protect the environment. Some people think by reforming permitting, we're going to just say the heck with the environment, but we'll have better environmental outcomes by having better permitting processes.

[Newt Gingrich]

I promise you, Chairman, you are providing real leadership in the best tradition of the Congress. I commend you.

[Congressman Bruce Westerman]

Thank you, Newt. Appreciate you.

[Newt Gingrich]

Thank you to my guest, Chairman Bruce Westerman. Newt's World is produced by Gingrich 360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garn Z Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying Newt's world, I hope you'll go to Apple podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich this is Newts World.

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