One would think that with his approval ratings in free fall, including his ratings on the handling of the economy, that President Joe Biden would be looking for every opportunity to stimulate the American economy.
Sorry — no such luck.
This week, Biden rolled back common-sense regulatory reforms that had been instituted by President Donald Trump, making it easier for environmental activists to obstruct and delay any infrastructure project that receives even a single dime of federal funds.
At issue is the National Environmental Policy Act, a relic of the 1970s, which empowers environmental radicals to go to federal court to stop any federal infrastructure project. Whether their case is meritorious or not, they can easily cause significant delays.
The cost of interstate highway construction, for example, has tripled since NEPA became law, making the U.S. one of the least efficient infrastructure investors in the entire world. The average environmental review required by NEPA now takes an average of four and a half years and runs thousands of pages long.
And it is not just highway projects that are hindered. Train stations, bridges, waterways, transmission lines, pipelines, solar projects — literally any infrastructure project the federal government funds must go through the burdensome and wasteful NEPA process. Nearby in Alexandria, construction of the Potomac Yards Metrorail Station was delayed by five and a half years thanks to onerous NEPA review requirements.
After three years of study, the Trump administration issued reforms to the NEPA process in July 2020, requiring all NEPA reviews to be completed within two years and setting strict page limits on the reports. These reforms also removed requirements that federal projects had to consider climate change and other indirect environmental impacts in their environmental regulatory assessments.
This week, the Biden administration announced it was rolling back all of Trump’s NEPA reforms. White House Council for Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said the stricter regulatory requirements “would help ensure that American infrastructure gets built right the first time.”
If it gets built at all. It makes you wonder: Why bother to pass or sign an infrastructure bill when Biden is simultaneously using environmental regulations designed to prevent anything from being built?
When Democrats tried to boost the economy after the Great Recession in 2009, the infrastructure projects in their stimulus legislation were stymied by the need for at least 192,705 NEPA reviews. These reviews caused huge delays and were a major reason why President Barack Obama was later forced to admit, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
There is no reason the U.S. cannot be a worldwide leader in efficient and productive infrastructure investment. Unfortunately, Biden and his radical environmental allies won’t let the public have nice things.
