In this episode, Breaking Battlegrounds welcomes Congressman Dusty Johnson of South Dakota for a frank discussion on the structural inefficiencies plaguing America’s ability to build—especially when it comes to national infrastructure and border security.
Johnson outlines his latest legislative effort aimed at expediting the construction and maintenance of the southern border wall. The proposed bill would require annual structural assessments and enforce timely repairs or new construction without delays caused by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to Johnson, both far-left and populist right groups have exploited NEPA to stall major projects, turning it into a weapon against progress.
Drawing comparisons with other nations, Johnson highlights that Germany, Canada, Italy, and Australia can complete infrastructure and energy projects in a fraction of the time it takes in the U.S. “When France and Italy start looking like models of efficiency, we know something’s broken,” he quips.
The conversation shines a light on a uniquely American issue: the bureaucratic bottleneck that’s slowing down everything from roads to energy to border protection.
Transcript
**Chuck Warren: **You've also proposed a bill to expedite border construction and having reforms to make sure it gets expedited. Could you tell our audience a little bit about that?
**Congressman Johnson: **Well first off, from a big picture perspective, it is really hard to build big things in this country. I mean, the same transportation project that you can get permitted in six years in Germany is takes six months in Germany, takes six years in America. And it's not like Germany doesn't care about the environment.
I mean, it's not like Germany doesn't care about habitat for animals. They just, they get after it.
**Chuck Warren: **Germany does it that much shorter of a time than the United States?
**Congressman Johnson: **They do, but they're not even, I mean, listen, they're sort of the best. I mean, I've cherry picked, but it's not just them.
The average energy project that you can get done in two years in Canada and Australia takes you seven years to do in America. Italy gets things done about 75% faster than America does. And listen, when you've got France and Italy as these paragons of regulatory efficiency compared to America, you know we are doing something wrong.
**Sam Stone: **My goodness.
**Congressman Johnson: **Yeah, it is absolute insanity. It is a uniquely American problem. Nobody does it as badly as we do. A lot of it comes back to NEPA, which is the Environmental Protection Act. And we have just the far left organizations and increasingly populist organizations on the far right as well have just figured out how to weaponize NEPA.
And it they know that time kills all deals and they just try to slow these things down until they grind to a halt. And and that has unfortunately that could happen as well at the southern border. And so my bill just makes it clear.
That a future president who maybe is not as driven to maintain that border wall, they're going to be required every single year to do an assessment of where does a wall need to be, where are their structural deficiencies in the wall we already have.
They will then need to go take care of those problems and they will not be subject to NEPA delays in those critical areas of the southern border.
**Sam Stone: **We're talking to Congressman Dusty Johnson, the lone U.S. representative from South Dakota.
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