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.
Mr. Biden’s allies brushed aside concerns about a slowdown from too much red tape.
“The idea that environmental regulations delay infrastructure projects is wrong,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat. “Fixing our roads and bridges shouldn’t mean eroding the health of our planet for future generations.”
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.
“My administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words,” Mr. Biden said at the U.N. Climate Conference in November.
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 rule-making when Mr. Biden’s climate agenda stalled in Congress late last year, though the regulatory crackdown proceeded apace.
The EPA boosted its inspection efforts by visiting more than 3,200 job and project sites across the country. The agency levied more than $1 billion in fines against individuals, companies and local governments for violating environmental regulations. The amount of fines in 2021 was the largest since 2017.
The agency committed more than $8.5 billion to bring existing projects into compliance. EPA officials said the figure is the highest in four years and 28% of the commitments address noncompliance in communities with “environmental justice concerns.”
“To deliver on this commitment, we’ve focused on actions with the highest potential to improve compliance and protect communities,” said Larry Starfield, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. “Coming off a challenging few years, these 2021 results make clear that rigorous enforcement is back at EPA.”
Regulations have expanded unabated as the White House touts its infrastructure package as a “once-in-a-generation investment” that will create “shovel-ready” jobs and projects.
Republican lawmakers said the president’s rhetoric is disingenuous.
“Although the administration is handing out an unprecedented amount of money for infrastructure, eliminating good regulatory reforms and adding new barriers to builders, job creators and local communities … will result in pushing more paper and increased compliance costs rather than putting shovels in the ground,” said Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Apart from environmental measures, experts say, the White House is imposing regulations on the transportation sector that will slow the fruition of projects.
David Ditch, a transportation policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said the Department of Transportation is pushing new safety regulations on roads and highways. The proposal focuses on raising driver safety standards while reducing speed limits and revamping road and highway infrastructure.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said a “paradigm shift” is needed to combat a spike in traffic fatalities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We cannot and must not accept that these fatalities are a fact of life in America,” the secretary said. “People make mistakes, but human mistakes don’t have to be fatal.”
As part of the proposal, Mr. Buttigieg is championing an overhaul of regulations and guidelines for road and highway construction. The emphasis will be on creating roads that help drivers “self-enforce” speed limits and improve emergency access to crash sites.
Mr. Ditch said the goal of the proposal is beneficial but will add another layer of bureaucratic red tape to states and localities looking to jump-start infrastructure projects.
“This is going to make highway projects more complicated and more expensive,” he said. “It will add to the length of time that it takes for federal bureaucrats to review and approve new highway projects funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill.”
