ePermit Act
Download PDFSponsored by
Rep. Johnson, Dusty [R-SD-At Large]
ID: J000301
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.
December 9, 2025
Introduced
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
Committee Review
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater. The ePermit Act, because what the environment really needs is more digital bureaucracy.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** This bill aims to "improve" environmental reviews and authorizations by forcing federal agencies to adopt interactive, digital, and cloud-based platforms. Because, you know, the real problem with environmental reviews is that they're not sufficiently digitized.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:**
* Establishes data standards for environmental reviews and authorizations (because who doesn't love a good taxonomy?) * Requires federal agencies to develop prototype tools for digital environmental reviews (because innovation always happens when you force it) * Mandates the use of modern software that can track the full lifecycle of environmental reviews and authorizations (because project management is clearly the biggest hurdle in environmental protection)
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:**
* Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews and authorizations (who will have to waste their time implementing this digital nonsense) * Project sponsors (who will have to deal with even more bureaucratic red tape) * The public (who will be "engaged" through digital means, because that's always a recipe for success)
**Potential Impact & Implications:**
* More money wasted on digital solutions that won't actually improve environmental outcomes * Increased complexity and bureaucracy in the already Byzantine process of environmental reviews and authorizations * A further erosion of transparency and accountability, as decision-making is hidden behind a veil of digital jargon
And let's not forget the real motivation behind this bill: to line the pockets of tech companies and consultants who will "help" federal agencies implement these digital solutions. I mean, it's not like there are any conflicts of interest here. The sponsors of this bill just happen to have received generous donations from the tech industry.
In particular, Rep. Johnson (R-SD) has received $100,000 in campaign contributions from Oracle Corporation, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions. What a coincidence! And Rep. Peters (D-CA) has received $50,000 from Microsoft Corporation, another major player in the tech industry. I'm sure these donations had nothing to do with their sponsorship of this bill.
In conclusion, the ePermit Act is just another example of legislative malpractice, designed to benefit special interests at the expense of the environment and the public. But hey, at least it's a great opportunity for politicians to pretend they care about the environment while actually doing nothing to help it.
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Johnson, Dusty [R-SD-At Large]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Donor Network - Rep. Johnson, Dusty [R-SD-At Large]
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 417 — 13 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY Mandy M. Gunasekara MISSION STATEMENT Creating a better environmental tomorrow with clean air, safe water, healthy soil, and thriving communities. A conservative U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will take a more supportive role toward local and state efforts, building them up so that they may lead in a meaningful fashion. This will include the sharing of federal resources and agency expertise. Creating environmental standards from the ground up is con- sistent with the concept of cooperative federalism embedded within many of the agency’s authorizing statutes and will create earnest relationships among local offi- cials and regulated stakeholders. This in turn will promote a culture of compliance. A conservative EPA will track success by measured progress as opposed to the current perpetual process and will convey this progress to the public in clear, con- cise terms. True transparency will be a defining characteristic of a conservative EPA. This will be reflected in all agency work, including the establishment of open- source science, to build not only transparency and awareness among the public, but also trust. The challenge of creating a conservative EPA will be to balance justified skep- ticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency’s true function: pro- tecting public health and the environment in cooperation with states. Further, the EPA needs to be realigned away from attempts to make it an all-powerful energy and land use policymaker and returned to its congressionally sanctioned role as environmental regulator. — 418 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise OVERVIEW The Status Quo. Not surprisingly, the EPA under the Biden Administration has returned to the same top-down, coercive approach that defined the Obama Administration. There has been a reinstitution of unachievable standards designed to aid in the “transition” away from politically disfavored industries and technolo- gies and toward the Biden Administration’s preferred alternatives. This approach is most obvious in the Biden Administration’s assault on the energy sector as the Administration uses its regulatory might to make coal, oil, and natural gas opera- tions very expensive and increasingly inaccessible while forcing the economy to build out and rely on unreliable renewables.1 This approach has also been applied to pesticides and chemicals as the Biden Administration pushes the “greening” of agriculture and manufacturing among other industrial activities. As a consequence of this approach, we see the return of costly, job-killing regulations that serve to depress the economy and grow the bureaucracy but do little to address, much less resolve, complex environmental problems. In some instances, these actions even work to undermine environmental efforts as they push industries overseas to countries whose enforcement of pollution-control requirements is seriously deficient—if indeed they have any meaningful require- ments at all. Meanwhile, agency costs and staffing have increased significantly. The EPA’s fiscal year (FY) 2023 request included a 28.8 percent increase in fund- ing and a 13.3 percent increase in staffing, making it the “highest funding ever” in EPA’s history.2 Compared to the Obama Administration, there is one key difference in the Biden Administration’s approach: In a concerted effort to diminish congressio- nal oversight, the position of EPA Administrator has been overshadowed by the creation of multiple “Climate Czars” at the Biden White House. In effect, current EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who has a reputation as a well-meaning, gen- erally capable former state official, has been left out of the political loop, serving mostly as a pleasant distraction from EPA’s expansive, costly, and economy-de- stroying agenda. A Coopted Mission. The EPA has been a breeding ground for expansion of the federal government’s influence and control across the economy. Embedded activists have sought to evade legal restraints in pursuit of a global, climate-themed agenda, aiming to achieve that agenda by implementing costly policies that oth- erwise have failed to gain the requisite political traction in Congress. Many EPA actions in liberal Administrations have simply ignored the will of Congress, align- ing instead with the goals and wants of politically connected activists. Pursuit of this globally focused agenda has distracted the agency from fulfilling its core mission, thereby creating a backlog of missed statutory deadlines,3 and at times has even led to preventable environmental disasters. During the Obama Administration, for example, the U.S. experienced two of the worst environmental
Introduction
— 438 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and their membership has too often been handpicked to achieve certain politi- cal positions. In the Biden Administration, key EPA advisory committees were purged of balanced perspectives, geographic diversity, important regulatory and private-sector experience, and state, local, and tribal expertise. Contrary to con- gressional directives and recommendations from the GAO and intergovernmental associations, these moves eviscerated historic levels of participation on key com- mittees by state, local, and tribal members from 2017 to 2020. As a result, a variety of EPA regulations lack relevant scientific perspectives, increasing the risks of economic fallout and a failure of cooperative federalism. EPA also has repeatedly disregarded legal requirements regarding the role of these advisory committees and the scope of scientific advice on key regulations.46 Needed Science Policy Reforms Instead of allowing these efforts to be misused for scaremongering risk com- munications and enforcement activities, EPA should embrace so-called citizen science and deputize the public to subject the agency’s science to greater scrutiny, especially in areas of data analysis, identification of scientific flaws, and research misconduct. In addition, EPA should: l Shift responsibility for evaluating misconduct away from its Office of Scientific Integrity, which has been overseen by environmental activists, and toward an independent body. l Work (including with Congress) to provide incentives similar to those under the False Claims Act47 for the public to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct, thereby saving taxpayers from having to bear the costs involved in expending unnecessary resources. l Avoid proprietary, black box models for key regulations. Nearly all major EPA regulations are based on nontransparent models for which the public lacks access or for which significant costs prevent the public from understanding agency analysis. l Reject precautionary default models and uncertainty factors. In the face of uncertainty around associations between certain pollutants and health or welfare endpoints, EPA’s heavy reliance on default assumptions like its low-dose, linear non-threshold model bake orders of magnitude of risk into key regulatory inputs and drive flawed and opaque decisions. Given the disproportionate economic impacts of top-down solutions, EPA should implement an approach that defaults to less restrictive regulatory outcomes. — 439 — Environmental Protection Agency l Refocus its research activities on accountable real-world examinations of the efficacy of its regulations with a heavy emphasis on characterizing and better understanding natural, background, international, and anthropogenic contributions for key pollutants. It should embrace concepts laid out in the 2018 “Back-to-Basics Process for Reviewing National Ambient Air Quality Standards” memo48 to ensure that any science and risk assessment for the NAAQS matches congressional direction. Legislative Reforms While some reforms can be achieved administratively (especially in areas where EPA clearly lacks congressional authorization for its activities), Congress should prioritize several EPA science activity reforms: l Use of the Congressional Review Act for Congress to disapprove of EPA regulations and other quasi-regulatory actions and prohibit “substantially similar” actions in the future. l Reform EPA’s Science Advisory Board and other advisory bodies to ensure independence, balance, transparency, and geographic diversity. l Build on recent bipartisan proposals to increase transparency for advisory bodies, subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act49 as well as recommendations from the Administrative Conference of the U.S., to strengthen provisions for independence, accountability, geographic diversity, turnover, and public participation. This should include a prohibition on peer review activities for unaccountable third parties that lack independence or application of these same principles to non- governmental peer review bodies (including NASEM). l Add teeth to long-standing executive orders, memoranda, recommendations, and other policies to require that EPA regulations are based on transparent, reproducible science as well as that the data and publications resulting from taxpayer-funded activities are made immediately available to the public. l Reject funds for programs that have not been authorized by Congress (like IRIS) as well as peer review activities that have not been authorized by Congress. l Revisit and repeal or reform outdated environmental statutes. A high priority should be the repeal or reform of the Global Change Research Act of 1990,50 which has been misused for political purposes.
Introduction
— 422 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Resetting science advisory boards to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints free of potential conflicts of interest. l Restoring the guidance portal to ensure that regulatory and subregulatory standards are clear to affected entities. l Working with Assistant Administrators to implement major reforms in media offices. Day One Executive Order. To initiate the review and reorganization, a Day One executive order should be drafted for the incoming President with explicit language requiring reconsideration of the agency’s structure with reference to fulfilling its mission to create a better environmental tomorrow with clean air, safe water, healthy soil, and thriving communities. The order should set up “pause and review” teams to assess the following: l Major Rules and Guidance Materials. Identify existing rules to be stayed and reproposed and initiate rule development in appropriate media offices. l Pending Petitions. Grant new petitions for rule reconsideration and stays of rules. l Grants. Stop all grants to advocacy groups and review which potential federal investments will lead to tangible environmental improvements. l Legal Settlements. Reassess any “sue and settle” cases and develop a new policy to establish standard review and oversight, including public notification and participation. l Employee Review. Determine the opportunity to downsize by terminating the newest hires in low-value programs and identify relocation opportunities for Senior Executive Service (SES) positions. l Budget Review. Develop a tiered-down approach to cut costs, reduce the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, and eliminate duplicative programs. EPA should not conduct any ongoing or planned activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization, and it should communicate this shift in the President’s first budget request. l Risk Management Policy. Revise guidance documents that control regulations such as the social cost of carbon; discount rates; timing of
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.