A 90-Day Deadline on Government Approvals

Somewhere right now, a project that’s been planned, funded, and approved by everyone who matters is sitting in a queue. A bridge repair. A new clinic. A small business waiting on a permit. A family separated by an immigration form that should have taken weeks and has taken years instead. None of them are stuck because anyone decided to say no. They’re stuck because no one has been required to decide at all.

That’s the quiet cost of government that takes its time. Delay isn’t neutral. Every month a ready project waits, costs climb, materials get more expensive, and the people counting on it keep paying for the wait. A government that serves the people should move promptly or explain itself. Right now it too often does neither.

Reviews Matter. Endless Review Doesn’t.

Let’s be clear about what we’re not saying. Careful review is the whole point. We want someone to check that the bridge is safe, the water is clean, the project is sound. Good government doesn’t mean rubber-stamping.

But there’s a difference between a real review and a process that has simply lost its sense of time. Major environmental studies routinely take four years or more, producing thousands of pages — much of it repeated, much of it written less to inform the public than to survive a future lawsuit. That isn’t diligence. It’s a system that has forgotten it owes anyone an answer.

Part of the problem is that reviews are run one after another, each office waiting for the last to finish before it even begins. Run them at the same time instead — in parallel — and accept solid outside studies rather than redoing work that’s already been done well. The diligence stays. The dead time disappears.

A Simple Rule: Decide, or Explain

Here’s the standard we think Americans would recognize as fair. Every federal agency should be required to make a decision within 90 days. Not necessarily a yes — a decision. If an agency needs longer, it has to say so publicly, give an honest reason, and set a new deadline it will be held to. No silent shelving. No indefinite limbo.

And when an agency blows past its own clock with no good reason, people need a real way to make it act — a straightforward path to ask a court to compel a decision. A deadline with no teeth is just a suggestion.

This Is About People, Not Just Projects

It’s easy to think of permits as paperwork. But behind the paperwork are real lives. Consider immigration: background checks for a firearm purchase can clear in hours, while a spouse waiting to legally join their family in America can wait well over a year — not for security reasons, but because the line is long and no one is on the clock. The same 90-day standard should apply there too. A government that can move fast when it chooses to has no excuse for keeping families apart through sheer inertia.

Promptness isn’t a small bureaucratic nicety. It’s a measure of respect — proof that the government takes the people’s time, money, and lives as seriously as the people do. Decide, or explain why you can’t. That’s not too much to ask.

The fuller case is in Righting the Ship.