Can Congress convince America it can get things done again?

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7 days ago

A bipartisan group in Congress recruited Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy earlier this month to help transform the 'Abundance Agenda' into legislative action.
Maloy, who represents Utah's 2nd Congressional District, became one of the first 30 lawmakers to join the Build America Caucus with the goal of removing government obstacles to housing, energy and infrastructure.
The burden bureaucratic rules place on local leaders is what first drove Maloy to enter Republican politics. So when she received a phone call to launch an initiative to roll back federal overregulation — coming from a Democratic colleague — she said she 'almost drove off the road.'
'We were speaking the same language,' Maloy told the Deseret News. 'That's the kind of political alignment that doesn't always come along. And when it does, you've got to take advantage of it.'
What was once a conservative talking point is now a bipartisan movement, according to Maloy, as office holders grow sick of how long it takes to get things done — and the costs of those delays are passed on to taxpayers.
The group held its first meeting last week, Maloy said, to address a problem disproportionately affecting Utah: affordable housing.
To help this and other sectors of the economy grow, Maloy hopes the caucus will target inefficient policies by:
Forcing agencies to respond to a permitting request within a certain time frame.
Requiring greater transparency about why requests are denied earlier in the process.
Reducing redundant oversight between agencies.
In 2024 and 2025, Maloy introduced the Full Responsibility and Expedited Enforcement (FREE) Act which would require federal agencies to replace individual review processes with quicker 'permits by rule.'
Maloy said she is currently 'testing the theory' that permitting reform has bipartisan support as she lobbies Democrat lawmakers in support of her bill, which would also give agencies just 30 days to grant applications.
'Those are all things that can get easy bipartisan support,' Maloy said. 'We've reached a critical point where the problem is clear to everyone.'
Around two-thirds of the Beehive State is managed by Washington, D.C., — more than any other state except Nevada. This has made many Utah projects subject to intense delays caused by federal review.
The TransWest Express Transmission Line Project, an example often cited by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, would transfer power along a 730-mile path from Wyoming to Nevada, crossing the entire state of Utah from Vernal to St. George.
At a recent 'Abundance Agenda policy forum," Cox said that plans for the project first crossed his desk in 2009, when he was a Sanpete County Commissioner.
The plans did not receive final approval from federal agencies until 2023.
During that time, nothing had changed — nothing to alter the route, or to protect wildlife, or to increase safety, Cox said. The only thing that had changed was the cost of the project, which had tripled.
'If you're taking 14 years or 15 years to just get approvals to build something, then we are broken,' Cox said at the event last week. 'When I say we've become really stupid this is what I'm talking about. That should never happen.'
The first executive order of Cox's second term sought to streamline the state permitting process by allowing projects to be reviewed under more general standards and by allowing plants to update their facilities without having to undergo a new review.
This policy was then made permanent in a largely bipartisan vote. State Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, who sponsored the companion legislation, HB85, said this is an example of 'abundance' in action, where a non-zero-sum mindset has made it easier to build.
'There are opportunities for us to improve the permitting process without weakening environmental regulations,' Clancy said. 'We can build better, more efficiently without sacrificing the robust standards that we have.'
But there is only so much the state can do.
The main roadblocks to large infrastructure projects 'are federal in nature,' according to Thomas Hochman, the director of infrastructure policy at the Foundation for American Innovation.
And there is no worse offender, Hochman said, than the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA — a law enacted in 1969 that requires projects to undergo a review by federal agencies that routinely take 3-5 years, and sometimes longer.
The lags imposed by NEPA have produced counterproductive results that often hurt the environmental features the law was meant to protect, Hochman said.
One example where this has happened is in the case of the U.S. Forest Service attempting to make wildfire protection plans, Hochman said. But in many cases before the plans are approved, major wildfires have already swept through the area.
'A lot of these so-called environmental laws, end up getting in the way of the environmental protection that they aim to ensure in the first place,' Hochman said. 'Stories like that are the sorts of things that I hope this caucus focuses on.'
While an overhaul to NEPA is unlikely, Hochman said there are smaller permitting reforms that the Build America Caucus can include in infrastructure bills that eliminate unnecessary steps in the process.
Making these moves at the federal level will do more than speed up projects — it will begin rebuilding Americans' confidence that they live in a country that can actually get things done, according to Chris Koopman, CEO of the Utah-based Abundance Institute.
While President Donald Trump's flurry of executive orders has 'completely changed the conversation' on streamlining government regulations, Koopman said, Congress needs to take action to make the change in trajectory permanent.
'It's the difference between a patch and a solution,' Koopman said. 'If we want to see this for the long run, it has to be a bipartisan effort so it can survive the shifting politics of each point in time.'
Over the past several decades, the United States has chosen 'paperwork over progress,' Koopman said, with NEPA representing 'the single greatest procedural barrier to American progress.'
Reforming federal regulations to encourage innovation will allow the public and private sectors to raise up the skyscrapers, dams and technologies that made America great, and in doing so, will rebuild faith in U.S. institutions, Koopman said.
'That's where I think the bipartisan Build America Caucus is really going to play a key role here is being a voice within the halls saying, 'It's time to build again,'' Koopman said.