Aiming to Grow Job Opportunities, McCaskill Urges Continued Commitment to Bipartisan Infrastructure Permitting Reform

Press Release

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, who teamed up to pass into law the Federal Permitting Improvement Act with Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, today urged continued commitment to the law's implementation at a Senate hearing.

"What I really want to hear about are--even if they're anecdotal--examples of where the [permitting] law is not working the way it's supposed to work, and what we need to do to, what two-by-four we need to pick up to exert pressure…," McCaskill said. "Wherever it is, wherever we've got to exert that pressure, I think it's really important, and I know that Senator Portman is committed to that, and frankly I enjoy doing that. So give me a chance to go to work and try to make this bill what we hoped it would be."

Senator Portman responded: "It's good to have a partner that likes to pick up that two-by-four on the oversight, not everybody does."

McCaskill also said at the hearing: "Sometimes changing those [calcified] processes takes more than a bill being signed by the President. Sometimes it takes continued pressure, continued oversight, continued aggressive efforts at looking at what is happening, why is it not happening, and what can we do to make this law have the impact that it has the potential to make. We worked hard getting this across the finish line. We did what you're supposed to do in the Senate, we had lots of folks upset about various things, and we kept working it, and working it, and working it, and finding agreement… until we got a bill that had broad support in the United States Senate on a bipartisan basis."

In June, McCaskill and Portman expressed their commitment to President Trump's proposals to reform federal permitting for large-scale infrastructure efforts, and called on President Trump to fully implement current laws to achieve that goal.

The Senators' Federal Permitting Improvement Act--which was signed into law in 2015--was designed to streamline and speed up the federal permitting process for the largest and most complex projects, right now laden with an uncoordinated federal review process. Businesses looking to undertake large infrastructure projects are currently subject to a massive bureaucratic process involving up to a dozen agencies and approvals, and even after approval, litigation can stall projects for years.

McCaskill's work to pass this legislation was cited by Daniel Mehan, President and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry as, "a real breath of fresh air for infrastructure around the country."

McCaskill and Portman's permitting reform bill was backed by a number of groups including: Missouri Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Soybean Association, Missouri Realtors, Associated General Contractors of Missouri, North American Equipment Dealers Association, Columbia Chamber of Commerce, Home Builders Association of Greater Springfield, St. Louis Regional Chamber, and Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

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