great to be back in New York with all of our friends and some great friends
outside the building I must tell you I want to thank all of our distinguished
guests who are with us today including members of our cabinet Treasury
Secretary Stephen minuchin OMB director Mick Mulvaney and of course our
transportation secretary is doing a fabulous job Elaine Chao thank you all
for doing a really incredible and creative job on what we're going to be
discussing today which is infrastructure we've just had a great set of briefings
upstairs on our infrastructure agenda my administration is working every day to
deliver the world-class infrastructure that our people deserve and frankly that
our country deserves that's why I just signed a new executive order to
dramatically reform the nation's badly broken infrastructure permitting process
just blocks away is the Empire State Building it took 11 months to build the
Empire State Building but today it can take as long as a decade and much more
than that many many stories where it takes 20 and
25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway
highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving nine
different federal agencies governed by 29 different statutes one agency alone
can stall a project for many many years and even decades not only does this cost
our economy billions of dollars but it also denies our citizens the safe and
modern infrastructure they deserve this over-regulated permitting process is a
massive self-inflicted wound on our country it's disgraceful
denying our people much-needed investments in their community and I
just want to show you this because it was just shown me and I think I think
I'm going to show it to the media both real and fake media by
the way this is what it takes to get something approved today the lane you
see that so this is what it takes permitting process flowchart that's a
float yard so that can go out to 20 years this shows about 10 but that could
go out to about 20 years to get something approved this is for a highway
I've seen a highway recently in a certain state I won't mention its name
it's 17 years I could have built it for 4 or 5 million dollars without the
permitting process it costs hundreds of millions of dollars but it took 17 years
to get it approved and many many many many pages of environmental impact
studies this is what we will bring it down to this is less than two years this
is going to happen quickly that's what I'm signing today this will be less than
two years for a highway so it's going to be quick it's going to be a very
streamlined process and by the way if it doesn't meet environmental safeguards
we're not going to approve it very simple we're not going to approve it so
this is maybe this one will say let's throw the other one away would anybody
like it from the media would anybody like that long beautiful shot you can
have it so my executive order also requires
agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major
infrastructure project it also holds agencies accountable if they fail to
streamline their review process so each agency is accountable we're going to get
infrastructure built quickly inexpensively relatively speaking and
the permitting process will go very very quickly no longer will we tolerate one
job-killing delay after another no longer will we accept a broken system
that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hardworking Americans
now I knew the process very well probably better than anybody I had to
get permits for this building and many of
the buildings I built all of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many
other places and I will tell you that the consultants are rich people they go
around making it very difficult they lobby Congress they lobby state
government city governments to make it very difficult so did you have to hire
consultants and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune so we're
streaming lining the process said we won't be having so much of that anymore
no longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent
country to crumble and decay while protecting the environment we will build
Leeming new roads bridges railways waterways tunnels and highways we will
rebuild our country with American workers American iron American aluminum
American steel we will create millions of new jobs and make millions of
American dreams come true our infrastructure will again be the best in
the world we used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world and
today we're like a third-world country we are literally like a third-world
country our infrastructure will again be the best and we will restore the pride
in our communities our nation and all over the United States will be proud
again so I want to thank everybody for being here god bless you god bless the
United States