HR 4776, explained
SPEED Act
Active Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works. · Author: Bruce Westerman (R-AR)
In plain English
This bill changes the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to study how its actions affect the environment. The bill would make it harder to trigger these environmental reviews and would speed up the review process when it does happen.
If this passes
What would actually change, according to the official CRS summary. No predictions, no opinions.
- Federal agencies would not have to decide that an action is a 'major federal action' just because it involves federal money.
- Agencies would only look at direct effects caused by the specific project, not indirect or distant effects that are speculative or separated in time or place.
- Agencies would only need to write environmental assessments for actions that are likely to have a reasonably foreseeable significant effect on the environment (a lower threshold than current law).
- Some actions already reviewed under other federal, state, or tribal environmental laws would not need separate NEPA review.
- It would be harder for people to challenge environmental review decisions in court.
Who's lobbying this bill
202 organizations reported lobbying activity
mentioning this bill. Federal lobbying reports list the bills an organization worked and its total quarterly lobbying spend, they don't say which side the organization took, and fees aren't itemized per bill.
Chamber Of Commerce Of The U.S.A.total lobbying spend, quarters naming this bill · 8 filings
$136.1M American Chemistry Counciltotal lobbying spend, quarters naming this bill · 4 filings
$21.1M Meta Platforms, Inc. And Various Subsidiariestotal lobbying spend, quarters naming this bill · 2 filings
$13.0M Money and the vote
How the chambers voted, from official roll-call records.
House · On Passage2025-12-18
221–196 Lobbying organizations' PAC money, by vote
Where an organization lobbying this bill has an affiliated PAC (linked through the FEC's
own connected-organization records), this shows that PAC's direct contributions to the members on each side of the
vote. Contributions span whole election cycles and are not tied to any single vote; no causal link is asserted.
American Chemistry Councildirect PAC contributions to House members voting (2024 + 2026 cycles)
$456K → Yes (221) · $176K → No (196) Meta Platforms, Inc. And Various Subsidiariesdirect PAC contributions to House members voting (2024 + 2026 cycles)
$118K → Yes (221) · $101K → No (196)
What you do with this is up to you. BallotBase doesn't rate, rank, or endorse
candidates or measures. Every number on this page comes from official disclosure filings, cited below.
Sources
- Bill text and CRS summary: Congress.gov.
- Lobbying activity: quarterly LDA reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House (lda.senate.gov).
- Votes: official House Clerk and Senate roll-call records. PAC contributions: FEC bulk data (committee-to-candidate transactions).
Explainer text is generated from the official source text above and reviewed for neutrality:
it describes only what the text says, in conditional terms, with no evaluations or predictions.
Spot an error? Tell us and we'll fix it.
← Back to all bills & measures · Voter Guide home