The Leader’s Floor Lookout: Week of November 11, 2024
Geothermal energy is a clean, renewable energy source that provides efficient and dependable power for long periods of time, making it a great resource for the United States to diversify our energy supply and restore our energy independence.
Currently, however, burdensome regulations are restricting American geothermal production on non-federal lands by requiring geothermal operators producing even minuscule amounts of federal resources to adhere to all federal laws and permitting processes.
This includes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires several lengthy review stages for geothermal permitting, holding up production for years and preventing geothermal operators from efficiently producing clean energy that can be used to generate electricity, heat American homes, and power industrial processes.
We should be promoting geothermal energy production, not placing administrative hurdles in its way. House Republicans are bringing forward legislation to unleash geothermal energy and streamline its production by cutting permitting red-tape, promoting American energy independence and lowering costs for hardworking Americans.
H.R. 7409, the Harnessing Energy At Thermal Sources Act, introduced by Rep. Young Kim, expedites geothermal energy production by exempting geothermal operators from federal drilling permit requirements, including NEPA, for wells on non-federal land where the United States holds an ownership interest of less than 50 percent of the subsurface geothermal estate.
House Republicans won’t stop fighting to unleash American energy, lower costs for families, and restore U.S. energy independence.
Cutting the Confusion Between Critical Minerals and Critical Materials
The Energy Act of 2020 defines critical minerals as minerals designated by the Secretary of the Interior through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to be critical, and requires the USGS to keep a critical minerals list (CML).
Meanwhile, the Energy Act of 2020 defines critical materials as non-fuel minerals, elements, substances, or materials that play a vital role in one or more energy technologies and have a high risk or supply chain disruption, and instructs the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a critical materials list that includes the critical minerals on the USGS CML.
The differences between the DOE’s more inclusive critical materials list and the USGS CML goes beyond just the names – the USGS CML is eligible for more extensive energy-focused benefits than the DOE’s critical materials, including various clean energy tax credits, financing support, and Fast-41 Permitting Dashboard access. This means the critical materials on the DOE list that do not appear on the USGS CML, such as copper, electrical steel, fluorine, silicon, and silicon carbide, are disadvantaged.
House Republicans are bringing legislation to eliminate the confusion between the DOE and USGS lists and ensure the same benefits are given to both Critical Materials and Critical Minerals, supporting U.S. self-reliance for critical minerals and materials.
Critical minerals and critical materials are both essential to the United States’ national and energy security, and we should be prioritizing them equally to bolster our country’s supply chain and ensure consistency and clarity in U.S. mining.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s legislation, H.R. 8446, the Critical Mineral Consistency Act of 2024, amends the Energy Act of 2020 to ensure all critical materials from the DOE’s critical materials list are included in the USGS CML, just as the critical minerals on the USGS CML are included in the DOE’s critical materials list.
We will continue working to boost the critical production of copper and other critical materials, create more economic opportunities, reduce U.S. reliance on foreign adversaries, and bolster our national and energy security.
Keeping FAFSA On Schedule for Students, Families, and Schools
FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, aims to increase accessibility and affordability of postsecondary education for students across the country who wish to continue their studies. These students must complete the FAFSA in order to access federal student aid programs like Pell grants and federal student loans. Additionally, some private and state programs also request FAFSA information for grant eligibility assessments.
The FAFSA is supposed to be available to students on October 1st of each year, however it is not required to be available until January 1st, according to the Higher Education Act. Typically, the Education Department has released the FAFSA application on October 1st, giving students, their families, and schools, time to prepare and plan.
In 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act to streamline and simplify the FAFSA process, and in 2021, Congress extended the deadline for implementation of the new FAFSA with the understanding that the Education Department would release it in October 2023 – that, however, was not the case.
Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the Education Department missed the October 1st deadline and delayed the form’s release for months, leaving families and schools confused. When the application was finally released on December 31st – one day before the January 1st deadline – it was a “soft-launch” full of errors and glitches with parts of the form unavailable, and students unable to submit or correct errors. Furthermore, after completion, processing was also delayed for months and contained calculation errors. Now, the Education Department says the FAFSA application release will be delayed for the second year in a row.
It’s not fair to hardworking students and their families or the schools looking to plan for the academic year for the Education Department to continue to delay, confuse, and complicate the FAFSA process – almost always to the detriment of interested students. By making this process more difficult for hardworking students, the Education Department is destroying the purpose of FAFSA.
H.R. 8932, the FAFSA Deadline Act, introduced by Rep. Erin Houchin, removes the flexibility in the deadline for the Education Department to release FAFSA applications by making October 1st the hard deadline for release and ends the confusion for students, families, and schools.
FAFSA is meant to make postsecondary education more accessible, not more complicated. House Republicans are fighting to ensure FAFSA’s implementation lives up to its purpose.
Distribution channels: U.S. Politics
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