Last week, Senator Shelley Moore Capito’s social media accounts tagged the acronym BAAJA and depicted her cracking open a Mountain Dew Baja Blast with tropical lime flavors.
For people not fully engrossed in congressional acronyms — and even for people who dabble — the reference might not have been crisp, cool, refreshing or clear.
Capito was making reference to the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026.
“Red tape is about to get BAAJA Blasted,” Capito said in a followup post.
Maybe at your house, you call this permitting reform. Or maybe it’s not a subject that comes up at your Taco Tuesday. But Capito says the policy will have effects on the American economy and productivity, and it’s lining up for congressional votes in relatively short order.
During an appearance on MetroNews Talkline, Capito expressed confidence that the bipartisan permitting reform bill will get a vote after she and her colleagues return Nov. 8 and cited White House support and broad stakeholder backing.
“It does have a chance. It has a great chance, and the reason is we negotiated a bipartisan agreement is because we’re just not building in this country,” she said on Talkline.
“We’re finding that things are getting canceled or people are walking away from projects. That’s costing us jobs. That’s costing us more money on our power bills because we’re just not building.”
The energy permitting reform legislation under consideration by the Senate, called the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, aims to accelerate the deployment of both traditional and clean energy infrastructure by slashing regulatory delays.
Capito, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has been right at the center of trying to push the policy.
“We’ve been talking about this for close to a decade, if not longer. And I worked really hard. We were the lead negotiators through my committee working on this, and I just didn’t quit. I worked with leadership. We worked with the White House,” Capito said.
“The White House has been right here with us, has made some tremendous concessions to to make sure that these wind projects go forward, these solar projects go forward, that everybody’s treated fairly, and that we get the certainty.”
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Late last month, as the Senate prepared to recess, Capito appeared with several of her colleagues, including Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee, R-Utah, and senators Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, and Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, to describe an agreed framework.
“Because we have four strong leaders supporting this in the Senate with the White House, we’ve been promised the first vote go back when we go back on November the eighth,” Capito said.
She said all sides had to give.
“What drove this really was if you go back and look during the Biden administration, he canceled the XL Pipeline. Obama canceled the big Spruce coal mining permit, costing hundreds of jobs. Then this president comes in and cancels the wind projects off the shore of Rhode Island,” Capito said.
“I serve with Senator Whitehouse, and we sit at the top of the Environment and Public Works Committee. And he looks at me and says, ‘This isn’t fair.’ And I said, ‘This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.’ So this drove, really, the parties together, and we were able to create an enormous bill that will really be, I think, legacy setting for this country.”
Once a project receives a permit, Capito said, a president shouldn’t be able to cancel it based on their views—– for example, a president opposed to wind power or pipelines. She says the bill is intended to give developers certainty that a permitted project can proceed.
“You’re not going to be held hostage depending on what an executive may think about whatever your project is. President Trump has been very vocal in his dislike for wind power. But if you can get a permit, you’re not going to be able to cancel that. Another president, like President Biden, doesn’t like pipelines. If I get my pipeline permitted, you can’t rescind that,” she said.
“And I think those alone create a certainty so that people will make investments that they haven’t made over the last several years, and it eliminates endless red red tape, duplicative reviews.”