President Joe Biden speaks about his infrastructure agenda while announcing funding to upgrade Philadelphia’s water facilities and replace lead pipes, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, at Belmont Water Treatment Center in Philadelphia. Patrick Semansky/AP
Biden has only himself to blame for infrastructure delays
Washington Examiner December 29, 04:00 AM December 29, 04:00 AM Video Embed
It has been over 13 years since then-President Barack Obama complained about the lack of “shovel-ready” projects on which to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated for his 2009 stimulus bill. But President Joe Biden is apparently just now relearning the lesson.
Biden has reportedly expressed “immense frustration” that his administration has few completed infrastructure projects to boast about on the reelection trail while 70% of voters give him poor marks on his handling of the economy. “He wants this stuff now,” one White House ally said.
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If stamping your foot petulantly were all it took to get stuff done, Biden would be a successful president.
But passing a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill does not guarantee anything will be built at all, let alone soon. In fact, many of the delays holding up infrastructure projects were caused by Biden himself.
First, there is the fact that many billions of dollars in Biden’s “infrastructure” bill wasn’t allocated to infrastructure, such as $15 billion for electric vehicles and $21 billion for “environmental remediation,” including restoration of the Florida Everglades. The Everglades are worth preserving, but swamp maintenance is not infrastructure.
Then, there is the centralized nature of much of the spending. Most federal infrastructure dollars flow from the Treasury to states using formulas including population size and gas tax revenue collected. States are then largely allowed to spend the money as they see fit. But this usual system was not good enough for Biden, who didn’t trust Republican governors to spend the money in ways that promoted a carbon-free transportation system.
Instead, his infrastructure bill channeled money through grant programs run by federal agencies, including the Transportation Department. This was a device to allow Democrats in Washington to send money directly to Democratic cities and counties while cutting off Republican governors.
But these were all new grant programs without any functioning rules guiding how local governments could apply and how the federal government would decide which local governments got what. The creation of those regulations took at least a year, and even then, local governments still had to apply under new rules and the agencies had to reward the money. All that took time as well.
Even then, some of these programs still can’t give out money because of social justice requirements built into the legislation. For example, a program that funds broadband internet service first requires a study detailing which communities are underserved. That study takes time to complete. Another program to remove lead pipes first calls for a study of the entire nation’s drinking water system. It is not a recipe for rapid action.
But the biggest sin of Biden’s infrastructure bill was that it excluded permitting reform. A recent study of interstate highway construction found that spending per mile has increased threefold since the 1960s.
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The biggest factor driving this is the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Ostensibly created to help the federal government plan better, NEPA has empowered radical environmental activists to abuse the system. They can stop or delay any federally funded project in court. The average NEPA review takes over 4 1/2 years, and the average cost is $4.2 million.
Biden did nothing to reform NEPA. Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t be whining to his staff about the lack of progress on completing new infrastructure projects.
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