President Biden’s zealous regulatory regime threatens major delays for his $1.2 trillion infrastructure program, according to experts, despite his heralding of the swift impact of creating jobs and improving Americans’ quality of life.
Making climate change policy an “all-of-government agenda” resulted in a flurry of new regulations.
Mr. Biden also ordered more stringent enforcement of previous rules, which critics say layers bureaucratic burdens on state and local governments and private companies.
“It’s a compounding effect, all of which is going to result in a lot more evaluation and a lot less actual delivery of infrastructure dollars and resources to projects on the ground,” said David Bernhardt, who served as interior secretary under President Trump.
Mr. Bernhardt pointed to revamped regulations and procedures for enforcing the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, which restored pre-Trump levels of enforcement at the Interior Department.
The extra paperwork attesting that projects do not hurt animal habitats or contribute to environmental degradation delays the groundbreaking of highways, bridges, and port projects in some cases for as much as a decade, critics say.
“If you take President Biden at his word, he wants to deploy these resources and move forward in a bipartisan way to enhance today’s infrastructure,” said Mr. Bernhardt, now chairman of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute.
“But at the very same time, his administration is creating a more burdensome, slower, and less efficient process. In doing so, he is both delaying and frustrating his own stated goal, which is incredibly ironic.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. …snip…
Mr. Biden has empowered Cabinet secretaries and agency bureaucrats to push wide-ranging environmental regulations. He wants to make up for what he sees as lost time after Mr. Trump made deregulation a top priority. …snip…
During his first year in office, the administration proposed more than 3,777 rules and regulations, according to the White House office of information and regulatory affairs.
At least 295 of the new regulations are deemed “economically significant,” meaning they have an annual cost of at least $100 million.
Many of the rules and regulations, including 301 from the Department of Transportation and 266 from the Environmental Protection Agency, directly affect agencies overseeing Mr. Biden’s infrastructure package.
The impetus further shifted to agency rulemaking when Mr. Biden’s climate agenda stalled in Congress late last year, though the regulatory crackdown proceeded apace.
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This is just about what you get from a dumber then a sack full of rocks Liberal Democrat idiotic regulations and Red Tape