Cabinet Secretaries Sign Pledge to Speed Up Permitting and Approvals

"Trump administration agencies, including Transportation, Housing, Interior and Energy, signed an administration memo Monday pledging to speed up permitting on major infrastructure projects using a two-year target," reports Michael Laris.

The pledge harkens back to a promise to speed up infrastructure project approval made by President Trump during the 2018 State of the Union. In his own words, he called on the federal government to "streamline the permitting and approval process -- getting it down to no more than two years, and perhaps even one."

"A dozen agencies and government councils signed the memorandum of understanding, which implements a Trump executive order from last year," according to Laris. "Guidance from the Office of Management and Budget calls on agencies to rework their environmental review processes to meet two-year targets."

Scott Slesinger, ­legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, is quoted in the article saying the Trump Administration's infrastructure plan amounts to little more than an "ideological attack on environmental safeguards" and a "scapegoat for this administration’s failure to secure new funding."