Partisanship continues to plague pipeline safety bill
A hearing Thursday featured lingering disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over how exactly the federal government should regulate oil and gas pipelines.
The Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety is one of several panels developing bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Congress has failed to pass a full authorization for the agency since 2020.
And the hearing suggested lawmakers may still be a long way from coming to an agreement, as Republicans and Democrats traded jabs about the agency's work under former President Joe Biden and the current Trump administration.
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'The unaccountable Biden PHMSA attempted to remake the pipeline safety agency into a climate change agency, because every agency in the federal government under Biden was a climate change agency,' said full committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
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