“I think there's a story of this bill, which is basically Democrats going, wait, I hate permitting laws. And Republicans going, wait, I hate utilities. And this bill basically being the product of those two realizations.”
Heatmap News · Climate & Energy · October 2026
Context
Meyer riffs on a SpongeBob meme ("wait, I hate golf") to explain the federal permitting reform bill. His guest had just described a bipartisan revolt against utilities over rising rates, which made Republican negotiators open to utility-accountability provisions.
Transcript
…with Republicans. And that's probably the much more dramatic change, actually, is that from the reporting I've read, the Republican negotiators on the bill were very happy to sort of introduce utility accountability type provisions in there. And that just would have been unheard of five years ago.
There's a meme from SpongeBob SquarePants where Mr. Krabs, the cartoon Krab character, for those listeners who are older Gen X and
above, says, wait, I hate golf in the middle of him golfing. He realizes he hates golf while he's golfing and people sub other things. And I think there's a story of this bill, which is basically Democrats going, wait, I hate permitting laws. And Republicans going, wait, I hate utilities. And this bill basically being the product of those two realizations.
I totally agree with that. I mean, some of this is just about people's bills going up and being mad at utilities and the political moment reflecting that. I do think there are some other things happening below the water level. One of the first things that made my eyebrows go up in the second Trump…
Do you think that this will continue? Just from what you're getting a sense of, will this decline in utility political clout continue or is this limited to this moment? And if this bill doesn't pass, then utilities are
going to close ranks and there won't be another chance to take on utility power again.
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