red tape

The use of red tape for tying up papers is of considerable antiquity. An advertisement in the Public Intelligencer, December 6, 1658, offers the reward for a restoration of a 'A little bundle of papers tied with a red tape, were lost on Friday last was a sevennight, between Worcester House and Lincoln's Inn.

1884, Eliezer Edwards, Words, Facts and Phrases ...curious, Quaint and Out-of-the Way Matters, page 469

All the red tape and paperwork that goes on there prevents any progress.

I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon / And cut through all this red tape / At a bar called O'Malley's / Where we'll plan our escape

1979, Rupert Holmes, “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”, in Partners in Crime

That committee does not cut through red tape ; it merely provides better scheduling for different agencies so you do not have sequential review by different agencies , so that you have some kind of simultaneity in the review by different agencies.

1979, United States Senate, Committee on Finance, Crude Oil Tax, U.S. Government Printing Office

One conspicuous cost of the compromise reached was a promise made by Senator Chuck Schumer to Manchin on what was vaguely called permitting reform: a catchall phrase referring to a whole host of efforts to cut red tape and ease the rollout of energy infrastructure.

2022 October 5, David Wallace-Wells, “Progressives Should Rally Around a Clean Energy Construction Boom”, in The New York Times

They said we’d be free of all that tedious European red tape and would take back control of our borders, encouraging anyone agitated by immigration to believe that fewer people would come in. […] Post-Brexit red tape is strangling thousands of small businesses, whether travelling musicians or exporters of goods, tying them up in daunting forms or extra charges that cost time and money they don’t have.

2023 June 23, Jonathan Freedland, “With even leavers regretting Brexit, there’s one path back to rejoining the EU”, in The Guardian, →ISSN