by Erin Mundahl
InsideSources

Infrastructure is both the the bill that won’t pass and idea that won’t die.

Last year, President Donald Trump pushed Congress to pass a $1.5 trillion package to help repair aging transportation and utility infrastructure around the country. That bill failed to get off the ground. This year, the president was at it again, laying out a broad “agenda of the American people” that included a pledge to “rebuild and revitalize our nation’s infrastructure” in his 2019 State of the Union address.

So what are the odds that a Trump infrastructure proposal could go through this time around?…

Sciemca specifically targets the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which he says can add years to the time it takes to complete a project while increasing costs by billions of dollars. While this may seem like a minor policy change, previous administration proposals have shown that there is little room for compromise in terms of reducing oversight. The Federal Communications Commission has already moved to relax certain NEPA requirements for 5G telecommunications installations, but encountered stiff resistance…

“NEPA is a twisted, redundant bundle of red tape that has cost billions and held-up some critical projects for decades with unnecessary multiple environmental reviews by federal, state, and local agencies, not to mention costly, time consuming legal battles,” says Steve Milloy, member of President Trump’s EPA transition team.

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