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Progress Report
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News, events, and must-read analysis from the Progressive Policy Institute.


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GOP killed permitting reform — giving Democrats a new campaign issue ([link removed])
By Paul Bledsoe and Elan Sykes
PPI's Strategic Advisor and Energy Analyst
For The Hill ([link removed])

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Over the last two years, Congress has passed a series of landmark bills that together fund more than $500 billion in clean energy investment, by far the largest ever enacted. More importantly, generous tax incentives can spur many trillions in direct private sector investments, creating a powerhouse U.S. advanced energy sector. Yet, right now, a broken U.S. energy permitting system short circuits thousands of major projects, imposing tremendously high costs in time and money to build clean infrastructure projects, if they get built at all.

Congress had an opportunity to fix this roadblock through a permitting reform bill, but despite claiming to support reform, Senate Republicans effectively killed the measure in a nakedly political effort to deny Democrats a popular policy win. Democrats should turn the tables on the GOP, making the economic and climate costs of this hypocritical action a major campaign issue in the upcoming midterm elections.

Ironically, in the name of environmental protection, a perverse process has developed over decades whereby often unnecessary and duplicative government reviews and nuisance lawsuits have pushed average time for permitting to 4.3 years for electricity transmission, 3.5 years for pipelines and 2.7 years for renewable energy generation projects. In the mid-Atlantic and near-Ohio valley alone, more than 2,500 projects are awaiting approval, 95 percent of which involve renewable energy. In fact, a new Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) report finds that without extensive permitting and regulatory reforms, large projected economic benefits and emissions reductions from recent laws would be substantially limited, and fail to meet policy goals.
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[link removed]'s%20Paul%20Bledsoe%20and%20Elan%20Sykes%2C%20for%20the%20Hill: https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fopinion%2Fenergy-environment%2F3671446-gop-killed-permitting-reform-giving-democrats-a-new-campaign-issue%2F Tweet ([link removed]'s%20Paul%20Bledsoe%20and%20Elan%20Sykes%2C%20for%20the%20Hill: https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fopinion%2Fenergy-environment%2F3671446-gop-killed-permitting-reform-giving-democrats-a-new-campaign-issue%2F)
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How to beat national populism ([link removed])
By Will Marshall
PPI's President
For The Hill ([link removed])

LIVERPOOL, England — Brexit is done, and Donald Trump, given the boot by U.S. voters, is angrily pacing the political sidelines. But the upsurge of rightwing populism that produced them both continues to roil transatlantic politics.

Last Sunday, the far-right Brothers of Italy party, which has a fascist lineage, finished first in national elections. Its leader, Giorgia Meloni, will become Italy’s first female prime minister. She’s a socially conservative Christian who opposes immigration, abortion and LGBTQ rights. Although she’s toned down her Euroskepticism, Meloni also is an “Italy First” nationalist likely to align with illiberal regimes in Poland and Hungary.

A virulent strain of national populism also is advancing in Europe’s social democratic heartland. The Sweden Democrats (SD), formerly a fringe party with neo-Nazi roots, finished a strong second in national elections earlier this month and will join a right-leaning government.
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** New From the Experts
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Why the defeat of Manchin’s energy bill could be a loss for the climate, ft. Paul Bledsoe, PPI's Strategic Advisor for Climate Energy and Economics
⮕ Washington Post ([link removed])

Biden's student loan forgiveness program faces new hurdles before election, ft. Ben Ritz, PPI's Director of the Center for Funding America's Future
⮕ Washington Examiner ([link removed])

Make a Release ft. Ben Ritz, PPI's Director of the Center for Funding America's Future
⮕ The Signal ([link removed])

Ed Gresser's Trade Fact of the Week: World patenting has quadrupled since the conclusion of the WTO’s TRIPs agreement
⮕ Trade Fact of the Week ([link removed])

Ed Gresser's Trade Fact of the Week: U.S. trade with Russia is down by 80% since February
⮕ Trade Fact of the Week ([link removed])

New Poll!

PPI Polling Finds Clear Message from Voters to Government: Don’t Touch My Beer

PPI recently commissioned a national survey by IMPACT Research of midterm voters’ attitudes on competition issues across a variety of industries. The survey found that a large bipartisan majority of voters are not focused on competition issues and do not want Congress or the federal government to take new regulatory action within the beer industry, as outlined in the Treasury Department’s February 2022 report. The polling finds that inflation is top of mind for likely 2022 voters and they generally don’t blame companies for high prices across industries.

Inflation continues to be the top priority of voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, while increasing competition between big companies ranks last. According to IMPACT Research’s findings, voters have concerns that new rules or regulations would raise the price of beer. PPI found ([link removed]) in September 2021 that beer actually had a low rate of inflation compared to the overall price levels for personal consumption expenditures.
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** ICYMI: Funding the Next Generation of European Broadband Networks
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By Malena Dailey, PPI's Technology Policy Analyst


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Online platforms face an increasingly complex regulatory environment in the European Union. Altering their business models to comply with EU regulation while simultaneously experiencing intense scrutiny from competition authorities, American tech companies are being pushed to evaluate their profitability in Europe. Yet, proposals circulating within the EU are seeking to capitalize on this profitability by taxing these same companies to subsidize broadband infrastructure expansion.

While the sector is currently engaging in high levels of investment and enjoying consistent revenue growth, the notion that any industry can withstand significant taxation on top of mounting regulatory compliance costs threatens both the jobs created by the sector and the promise of future investment. These are circumstances that the European telecommunications industry knows well. With amassed regulation corresponding to relatively weak revenue growth over time, EU telcos have struggled to invest in the development of new high speed network technology such as 5G at the same rate as their counterparts in the United States and China. As high-capacity networks become the norm for consumers who rely on data-heavy services like streaming high-quality video and video conferencing tools, Europe risks being left behind in the next era of technological innovation. Though plagued with its own set of problems such as the ongoing debate over net neutrality, the U.S. telecommunications industry has
managed to sustain a high level of investment, resulting in widespread 5G infrastructure and connectivity. Concurrently, European telcos have faced weak revenue growth and difficulty translating the demand for online services into a demand for new subscriptions.

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Mark Your Calendar!

October 10: Tech Policy Reception (London)
⮕ RSVP Here ([link removed])

October 11: U.S. and EU Networking Reception (Bruxelles)
⮕ RSVP Here ([link removed])

October 20: Women in Policy Alliance: Coffee and Conversation
⮕ RSVP Here ([link removed])

Be sure to keep an eye out for future PPI events! ([link removed])
Listen Up

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RADICALLY PRAGMATIC:

Could Ignoring Swing Voters Reopen the Door for Donald Trump?

In September 1989, the brand-new Progressive Policy Institute published The Politics of Evasion: Democrats and the Presidency. Nearly 33 years later, this political study maintains more than just historical interest today as the Democratic Party once again must wrestle with basic questions of political outlook and electoral strategy. Written by political scholars William Galston and Elaine Kamarck, their analysis refuted the principal “myths” that the party’s establishment embraced to explain away recent losses.
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THE NEOLIBERAL PODCAST:
Reporting about Russia ft. Denis Malinin

Jeremiah is joined by Denis Malinin, a dissident Russian journalist living in New York City and running an independent Russian-language news service. Denis joins the show to discuss his journey through Russian state media, why he quit to found his own independent news show, how Russia's propaganda machine works, and how regular Russians think about the war in Ukraine.

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