Barriers to Building

When President Joe Biden signed the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) on the South Lawn in front of 800 lawmakers and guests, he claimed “So my message to the American people is this: America is moving again, and your life is going to change for the better.”¹ For the Democratic Party—the party of government—the infrastructure law was more than just a big accomplishment, it was a massive opportunity to show what government could do.

That opportunity was squandered. As part of the law, the government promised over $40 billion to expand broadband access and $5 billion to build out a nationwide network of EV charging stations. More than three years later, not a single person has been connected to the internet with those funds. Only 56 charging stations have been built. People went to the polls having heard years of promises without witnessing tangible results.

As staunch supporters of the infrastructure bill, we were in the audience that day, and we still believe these investments are vital to America’s success. But we must be honest. Government failed to timely build what we promised. And when government fails to deliver—whether it’s from Washington or in the bluest states and cities—there are massive economic, socioeconomic, and political repercussions that Democrats don’t truly appreciate. In short, if we can’t build—quickly and to scale—we further erode trust in government, the one essential commodity for a party that still believes that smart, effective, efficient government is an essential part of democratic capitalism.

In this memo, we examine two of these programs and what held back progress. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program is a $42 billion program that funds the build out of broadband infrastructure in order to connect unserved and underserved communities. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program is a $5 billion formula program providing funds to every state to build out fast EV charging along highway corridors. Both have struggled to get off the ground due to a morass of government red tape, roadblocks, and bureaucracy. Our aim in this paper is not simply to shine a spotlight on these glaring problems, but to urge Democrats across the country to confront them bluntly and boldly wherever they arise—so that yesterday’s mistakes become tomorrow’s blueprint for a new era of sweeping and systematic government reform and abundance.

Red Tape Requirements

One surefire way to slow down progress is by drowning it in red tape. Even if government requirements mean well, they all too often delay implementation and add to the cost. The infrastructure experience has been no different. Many of the stipulations imposed by Democrats were mandated with pure intentions, but the result has led to devastating delays.

Broadband

The Biden Administration loaded up BEAD funding from the start with a series of time-consuming requirements. Rules included a preference for hiring union workers and having “robust and specific plans to recruit historically underrepresented populations” regardless of whether those workers were available in a given community.² Broadband providers had to account for climate change, including both the current risks and those over the coming decades.³ Construction materials had to be made in America, unless a waiver was granted.⁴ The government also wanted states to set specific prices for what broadband would cost, while many states preferred to leave that to providers. That one issue, for example, caused months of delays approving Virginia’s funding plan and forced some small and rural broadband providers to reconsider whether they could viably participate in the program.⁵

Program rules also prioritized using fiber-optic technology over other technology which has led to its own series of challenges. Supply chain issues slowed rollout and increased costs.⁶ Further, topography (particularly in rural and tribal areas) isn’t always conducive to that specific technology, dampening private sector involvement.⁷

EV Charging

Similarly, in implementing NEVI, the Administration went well beyond what Congress asked in tying the funding to dozens of rules and requirements—many of which were overly prescriptive, caused delays or cost increases, and at worst were rendered obsolete within months.

Among them, the Administration required NEVI-funded chargers to have a specific type of charging port known as CCS, and then declined to remove this requirement for months even as the entire EV industry adopted a different standard.⁸ It also required charging stations to be located within one mile of a highway exit, even if there were better locations beyond one mile—such as where there was already the necessary electricity infrastructure or where there was more for drivers to do while waiting for their car to charge.⁹

The Administration also required NEVI chargers to be installed by electricians who had gone through either the EV Infrastructure Training Program (EVITP) or a registered apprenticeship program. At least one charging station, in eastern Oregon, was put on pause for lack of EVITP-certified electricians in the area. There is no question that fast chargers are highly electrified, complex pieces of equipment that require workers who know what they’re doing. But at a time when the well-documented electrician shortage is making electrification projects of all kinds take longer, the Administration should have provided more ways for states to find the right workers, not fewer.¹⁰

Finally, NEVI funds came with Buy America requirements that have had some success in bringing more charger manufacturing to our shores but which the executive director of the federal office overseeing NEVI acknowledged “probably” slowed the rollout.¹¹

The Administration should have released technology-neutral, performance-based rules to ensure charging stations would meet minimum standards for important things like reliability, interoperability, and long-term maintenance—which was what Congress directed. Beyond that, let states and the market decide what kinds of chargers to build and where.

Building Roadblocks

It took one year and 45 days to build the Empire State Building.¹² Nowadays, it would take far longer than that just to clear federal environmental review processes. Permitting delays and building requirements have grown exponentially, affecting everything from the construction of affordable housing to renewable energy production. For infrastructure projects, those roadblocks have led to one thing: delay. While many of these issues predate the Biden Administration and the IIJA—and some are not even under federal jurisdiction—the Administration should have recognized these problems would slow the buildout and acted quickly to address them, unilaterally or with state partners.

Broadband

Permitting issues have significantly affected the construction of broadband infrastructure. There is no central permitting agency for broadband, and there are instances when 17 different agencies need to be involved.¹³ When projects cross jurisdictions, tribal lands, or state lines, there are often numerous differences in administrative processes and conflicting guidance, further slowing construction.¹⁴ The Administration did encourage areas to “remove time and cost barriers associated with BEAD projects, including by expediting permitting timelines,” but that’s a far cry from actually reducing time to build.¹⁵

For broadband, specifically, utility poles are a persistent roadblock. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rules intended to ensure communications providers can get timely access to attach their lines to utility poles at reasonable rates. But poles owned by municipalities and cooperatives are exempt, so costs can double the amount to deploy your cables—or attachment requests may just be ignored.¹⁶ Instead of pushing the FCC to adopt improved rules or pushing the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to require better pole access for the BEAD program, the roadblocks have persisted and could add tens of thousands of dollars to a project’s cost.

EV Charging

There are no federal permitting policies specific to EV charging. Rather, developers have to contend with a patchwork of thousands of different local-level policies. In many cases, towns don’t have charging station-specific policies and have to make it up on the fly. This has been the case for years: the Biden Administration could have released model permitting policies at the start of the program for state DOTs or the charging companies they contract with to take to city councils so they could speed the process along. Alternatively, they could have worked with states to enact state-level policies to act as a backstop for when localities move too slowly, similar to what Colorado passed in May 2024.¹⁷

On top of that, many states have laws prohibiting non-utilities from selling electricity to consumers; these so-called ‘regulated market states’ have had to pass new laws allowing EV charging companies to sell electrons to EV drivers. Again, this issue has existed for a long time, and the Administration should have worked with those states early on to find a solution. That could have included model legislation similar to laws passed by states like Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Wisconsin; or the Administration could have considered allowing charging companies to charge for time spent at the charger, rather than by the amount of electricity consumed.¹⁸

The EV charger buildout has also suffered from supply chain challenges, including delays of up to two years to obtain a transformer, 68 weeks for a power socket, and one year for switchgear.¹⁹ This is a sticky problem that can’t be resolved overnight, and it’s one place where the Administration took concrete actions to address the problem, including by easing its proposed transformer efficiency rules that may have exacerbated the transformer shortage,²⁰ and invoking the Defense Production Act to speed up transformer manufacturing.²¹

Bureaucracy over Urgency

Government programs tackle some of the most urgent and important issues in our time, so they obviously need to be designed well. But it all too often feels as if we are constructing programs to prioritize bureaucracy over expediency. In the case of infrastructure, delays seem to have been built into the fabric of the projects.

Broadband

The way the program was designed, funds couldn’t be released until well after the FCC had accurate maps of where high-speed broadband was available throughout the country. But the maps were found to be inaccurate from the start, especially in rural areas. So, eligible entities and the broader public had to be given an opportunity to challenge the data in the maps.²² Accuracy is important, but this led to significant delays from the start.

There have also been delays due to the capacity of state and local governments and the interplay between states and the federal government. The back-and-forth revisions between states and NTIA on the BEAD plans was extremely time consuming, often adding months of delays. Even though BEAD funds can be used to capacity-building in state offices, planning, oversight, and permitting have often overwhelmed local government offices. For example, the Arizona Commerce Authority noted that “There is also the challenge of available staff to handle the influx of permits that will likely follow the start of the BEAD program funded infrastructure and to process them in a timely manner.”²³ Other states grappled with lack of expertise to navigate complex broadband deployment. And others struggled to cobble together the necessary matching requirement.²⁴

EV Charging

According to industry, it takes roughly 18 months to site, permit, construct, and connect a new EV charging station—and that’s without the federal government getting involved.²⁵ The Administration should have communicated a more realistic timeframe for when Americans would start seeing federally funded charging stations coming to their towns from the start—but they also should have anticipated the issues that make this process take so long and gotten out in front of them.

Things didn’t get off to a quick start, either. It took the Administration until February 2023 to release the final rules for the program, making states wait over a year after IIJA enactment—and six months after their deployment plans were approved—to start spending the money. The rulemaking process could have gone much faster if the Administration had adopted tech-neutral, performance-based standards over the very specific, complicated, and highly prescriptive approach they took.

Moreover, most state DOTs have no experience with EV charging. To implement NEVI, they’ve needed to coordinate with utilities, navigate local siting and permitting policies, build new relationships with EV charging providers, and make sure those providers adhere to NEVI’s many requirements.

There’s no question that most states aren’t spending their NEVI funds as expeditiously as they could—nine haven’t even released their first Request for Proposals to award their Fiscal Year 2022 funds.²⁶ But Congress anticipated this and gave the Administration a way to claw back funds from states moving too slowly and instead offer that state’s NEVI funds directly to municipalities in that state on a competitive basis. The Administration waited far too long to even begin that claw-back process, giving states until September 30, 2024 to even notify them that they could be at risk of losing the money.²⁷

Conclusion

Passing a law is a major step, but it is only the first step. It is not an accomplishment all its own. When we sat on the White House lawn on that sunny day as the President signed the infrastructure law for the next generation of cleaner, faster, and better ways to move people, products, and communications, none of us were thinking that more than three years later we’d have almost nothing to show for it.

We are our own worst enemy. Delays, red tape, bureaucracy, and process over progress have bedeviled a party that believes that government must be a force for good. Correcting this is not impossible, but it means ending business as usual, saying no to the interest groups that have zero interest in things getting built, and putting a premium on keeping the promises we made to the American people.

We have to care as much about implementation as we do about passage. And let’s remember: if government does not meet the expectations we demand for it, we pay the price.