Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer a commonsense amendment to this transportation bill. This simple amendment requires the Federal Government to start keeping track of costs and time required for an environmental review undertaken for transportation projects in the new online database established by this bill.

Last year GAO released a comprehensive audit of NEPA and found that there is currently no system in place for the Federal Government to track such information. It defies common sense that the Federal Government has no idea how long environmental reviews take or how much these reviews actually cost taxpayers and job creators.

While scant information on this matter is available, GAO was able to identify that, within the Department of Energy, the average cost paid for a NEPA review was $6.6 million and that, shockingly, some environmental reviews cost nearly $90 million.

In addition to the GAO report, a new report issued by the National Association of Environmental Professionals released just last week found that:

It took agencies an average of 1,709 days to get from a notice of intent, the first step in preparing an EIS, to publication of a final EIS. That is 4 days longer than the previous record set in 2013 and up from fewer than 1,200 days in 2000.

The report found that it takes the National Highway Administration 6 1/2 years to complete an environmental study, 6 1/2 years before we can start work on construction projects. But the Federal Government can't even verify or dispute that number because they don't even track that information. These unnecessary delays would make Buzz Lightyear from ``Toy Story'' blush. His time mantra, ``to infinity and beyond,'' is inappropriate for NEPA. NEPA studies should not be allowed to linger in perpetuity.

Contractors and folks in the construction industry are sitting on the sidelines losing time and money. Some have reported waiting as long as 10 years on environmental studies before beginning work. The current system fails to provide certainty, and the current bureaucracy associated with this process is killing jobs.

While the Federal Government doesn't seem to care to track this information, these reports confirm what exasperated contractors and frustrated taxpayers have known for years: the average time it takes to conduct an environmental review is growing. Each year more than a month is added to the average time it takes to complete these studies.

My amendment will increase transparency for this process by requiring the Federal Government to start keeping track of the time, cost, and number of environmental studies conducted for transportation projects.

This amendment is a responsible, commonsense step that a government accountable to the people should take to show proper stewardship of the public's dollar, time, and resources. If you support government accountability and transparency, you should support this amendment.

I thank the chair and the ranking member for their tireless efforts to find a long-term transportation solution. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chairman, I would ask my colleagues to vote for this amendment in the fact that transparency doesn't hurt anybody. We need to look back at the process, and that should be for everybody--for the taxpayer, for the construction companies, for the States in which this is occurring. Transparency will show it all and leave nothing behind. It is great to implement this at the start of the process, not later on in the implementation. That is where common sense beleaguers me.

Mr. Chairman, I ask everybody to vote for this amendment.

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