Congress doesn't need to pass a dime of new infrastructure spending to move this trade. What it needs to pass is permitting reform — and multiple bipartisan bills addressing transmission siting, interconnection queue reform, and FERC authority over interstate transmission lines have been circulating since 2023, with backers on both sides of the aisle citing the same number: over 2,000 gigawatts of mostly wind, solar, and storage capacity now sit stuck in interconnection queues nationwide, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's queue data, because the grid physically cannot absorb it without new lines and upgraded substations. That backlog is a demand signal independent of appropriations. Every data center, EV-charging build-out, and reshored factory adds load to a grid that's already queue-bound. Permitting reform doesn't create the demand — it just removes the legal friction stopping utilities from building to meet it. That's why this is a narrower, cleaner catalyst than "infrastructure spending broadly": it's deregulatory, not appropriative, so it doesn't need to survive a budget fight to pay off.
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