Saying the status quo is holding down economic and job growth, President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at streamlining environmental reviews and permitting of major infrastructure projects and establishing a two-year goal for such processes.
The White House said the changes are desperately needed, noting a Government Accountability Office report that said it takes seven years, on average, for a complex highway project to go through the environmental review process, and a separate study asserting a single agency review can take up to five years.
“Just blocks away is the Empire State Building. It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today, it can take as long as a decade and much more than that – many, many stories where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway,” the president said during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City.
Trump overshadowed his news by saying counter-protesters shared some blame for the events that unfolded at a violent white supremacist rally in Virginia on Saturday. The president’s comments on an already charged national issue drew widespread criticism and marked another volatile day in national politics.
The order requires federal agencies to track costs of environmental review and permitting processes and implements a “one federal decision” process under which one federal agency will lead reviews and others will sign a joint record of decision, after which federal permits will be issued 90 days later.
Under his plan, state and local governments will be able to meet infrastructure challenges and the federal government will “get out of the way,” according to the White House.
“This overregulated permitting process is a massive self-inflicted wound on our country – it’s disgraceful – denying our people much-needed investments in their community,” Trump said at his press conference.
After the press conference, reporters asked National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn about a timeline for infrastructure legislation. Cohn said “you will see a lot of information from us” about tax reform in the coming weeks, according to a pool report.
After Cohn said infrastructure would “come on the heels of taxes,” reporters asked if that would be this year.
“We hope it’s this year,” Cohn said, according to the press pool report. “We need to get taxes done between now and Thanksgiving. We need to get infrastructure going – as soon (sic) tax comes out of the House and goes to the Senate, we’ll put infrastructure in the House.”
Heading into his presidency, it appeared that Democrats and Republicans might find common ground on plans to invest in infrastructure upgrades across the nation, but Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have had difficulty pushing major bills through, including failed health care reform proposals.
