President Trump this week reiterated his commitment to “rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.” He called upon Congress to enact a law that “generates at least $1.5 trillion” and also to “streamline the permitting and approval process — getting it down to …
New York Daily News: Build Big Without Wasting Billions
New York is at the cusp of a major infrastructure building boom, but an obsolete New York statute from the 19th century called the Scaffold Law has already wasted $200 million on one project — the new Mario Cuomo (Tappan …
American Infrastructure: Summary of Common Good’s Report: Two Years, Not Ten Years
By Philip K. Howard May 11, 2017
Rebuilding America’s decrepit infrastructure requires a new permitting system. Approvals today can take a decade, sometimes longer. Delay dramatically adds to costs and prevents projects from getting off the drawing board. Lengthy environmental …
Ripon Forum: Fixing the Civil Service
By Philip K. Howard April 28, 2017
Americans think Washington is broken. That’s why they elected a tough-talking outsider as president. But fixing Washington requires more than one person; it requires a new operating system that allows people to make …
New York Daily News: Shred the Red Tape
President Trump has signaled that one of his next big initiatives will be to jump-start a trillion-dollar program to rebuild America’s fraying infrastructure. As a former builder, Trump would seem to be uniquely qualified to oversee this initiative.
Rebuilding infrastructure …
Daily Beast: Jared Kushner Actually Has a Chance to Do Something Good for the Country
By Philip K. Howard March 31, 2017
A new White House office of innovation, led by Jared Kushner, has been created to apply business techniques to make government work better. Leaving aside state enforcement powers, much of what government does …
Daily Beast: How Trump Can Save Almost $1 Trillion in 10 Easy Steps
By Philip K. Howard February 28, 2017
Donald Trump has a mandate to clean out the mess in Washington. Cutting waste is critical. This golden opportunity may fail, however, if the Trump administration starts a culture war by defunding EPA …
Wall Street Journal: The President’s Right to Say ‘You’re Fired’
By Philip K. Howard January 30, 2017
President Trump wants to overhaul the civil service. Even ardent liberals agree it needs to be rebuilt, but past efforts at reform have withered in Congress under union power and public indifference. There’s …
American Interest: Civil Service Reform: Reassert the President’s Constitutional Authority
By Philip K. Howard January 28, 2017
Donald Trump wants to overhaul the civil service system. Even ardent liberals agree it needs to be rebuilt. Past efforts at reform in Congress, however, have withered in the face of union …
Right of Way: Billions for Red Tape (Reprint of May 2016 Report)
By Philip K. Howard January 9, 2017
Two new rail tunnels need to be built under the Hudson River to alleviate a critical rail bottleneck and permit overhaul of century-old tunnels. The purpose of this report is to outline the …
Washington Post: Six Presidents Have Failed to Cut Red Tape. Here’s How Trump Could Succeed.
On Fox News on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump lamented that those seeking government permits sometimes “are waiting in line for 15 years,” sometimes only to get rejected in the end, and vowed to
…American Interest: Democracy for an Age of Distrust
By Philip K. Howard November 16, 2016
Americans now have an historic opportunity to reimagine government. The
key is to abandon the centralized operating philosophy which, in thousandpage
rulebooks, purports to tell everybody how to do everything. We need to…
Daily Beast: We Can’t Change Washington—So Let’s Dismantle It and Spread It Around
By Philip K. Howard October 16, 2016
Americans obviously believe there’s something wrong with Washington. But what needs to change? Generalized anger at Washington gets the public nowhere. Candidates have been running against Washington for decades, and have a perfect …