The biggest barrier to building America isn’t politics. It’s paperwork

Congress and the White House are increasingly rallying around a major national priority: building America faster. The recently introduced Build AMERICA 250 Act, which would invest heavily in roads, bridges, transit and broadband, reflects growing bipartisan recognition that the United States must modernize critical infrastructure to continue leading a fast-changing world. But here is the unavoidable truth: none of this progress can happen at the speed the country needs without meaningful permitting reform. One of us leads an organization representing the nation’s governors—Republicans and Democrats charged with delivering results for their states. The other leads the association representing America’s broadband providers—the companies whose crews, engineers and investments build the networks that connect us all. We come at this from very different vantage points. But we have arrived at the same conclusion: America’s permitting system is broken, not by ideology, but by bureaucracy.

[Brandon Tatum is CEO of the National Governors Association. Jonathan Spalter is CEO of USTelecom.]