Many Americans were heartened to learn that President Trump is proposing a large-scale overhaul of America’s ailing infrastructure. But if any further evidence is needed to substantiate voter frustration with Washington’s gridlock, consider the ensuing Beltway reaction to the president’s initiative.
One would think that rebuilding roads and bridges should lead to quick bipartisan agreement, notwithstanding some minor quibbling over the price tag. But Washington’s bureaucratic squabbling is truly baked in. Almost as soon as the administration talked of permit reforms needed to launch infrastructure repair, the “green lobby” rose up in full force. For them, anything that brings about greater efficiency is problematic. It poses a mortal threat to their franchise, which is the manipulation of regulations and agencies to slow or stop projects.
In order to begin the task of building new bridges, new waterworks, new rail lines, etc., many are calling for a streamlining of the National Environmental Policy Act. This is long overdue, given the staggering minutiae and stumbling blocks that now make public works so costly and time-consuming.
But we’re told by the League of Conservation Voters that improving the NEPA process would simply be “gutting the agencies that protect our clean air, water, lands and wildlife, while adding an extreme rollback of our bedrock environmental laws disguised as an infrastructure plan.” And the National Resources Defense Council sees any permit streamlining as a “disaster” and an “unacceptable corporate giveaway.”
This is the hysteria that greets a proposal to update a red-tape process that today requires more time to permit new mines than it did to build the Panama Canal. If the French were saddled with our permit process, Gustave Eiffel would still be waiting for the “oui” to build his iconic tower.
There are many like-minded obstructionists who simply reject any construction, even if it’s for essential public services like waterworks, hospitals, and airports.
In resisting such improvements, staunch environmentalists put a primacy solely on the value of the natural environment they fear would be lost in the process of construction. The works that are being contemplated — new rail lines, new sewage treatment plants, expanded harbors — obviously offer value to most taxpayers, but (as they see it) not to them. They prefer the status quo, including an archaic, cumbersome mine permitting process that limits access to domestic minerals and metals, and thus encourages sourcing from countries that do not employ comparable environmental and reclamation standards.
What’s really behind all this obstruction? Two centuries ago, the first Luddites rose up in anger to destroy the textile machines of industrial England that threatened their livelihood as traditional weavers. Today, the new Luddites rise up to block a similar threat to their power base. The administration has proposed a sensible “one agency, one permit” concept to replace the current multiple-agency review process. But this alarms those who have grown accustomed to using every permitting agency as a means to stall and reject needed projects.
The Wall Street Journal observed that of the $787 billion allocated to stimulate the flatlined U.S. economy in 2008, only $60 billion was spent on putting steel in the ground and people back to work. Surely one reason so few projects actually made it to the “shovel ready” phase was due to the endless time and cost of gaining permits and clearances. At least the lawyers got work from the stimulus.
Candidates for office this fall may have to explain to working men and women why commonsense solutions are being blocked. What’s urgently needed is a statute of limitations on permitting decisions, and the elimination of duplicative reviews. Real, bipartisan infrastructure investment can create jobs and make cities safer. It shouldn’t be stifled by knee-jerk ideological objections.
Luke Popovich is vice president for external relations at the National Mining Association.
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