Issue Position: Overregulation

Issue Position

One measure of the growth of the government and bureaucratic red tape is the number of pages added to the Federal Register, which contains notices of all federal agency rules and regulations. In the past five years, new rules and regulations have added an average of 215 pages per day to the Federal Register. This perpetually growing, constantly changing regulatory environment hampers investment, increases the incidence of frivolous lawsuits, and kills job creation. One study suggests that the weight of these regulations has reduced real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth by an average of 2 percent each year since 1949. This has greatly reduced average income and in an era of less than 2 percent growth, is enough to dramatically impact household income and unemployment.

My goal in Congress is to reduce these regulatory burdens that impact nearly every aspect of our lives, from the health care plans we can buy to the light bulbs we can use. Among the steps I have taken to roll back these government intrusions into our lives:

* I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 367, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which passed the House on August 2, 2013. The REINS Act is an effort to restore a measure of accountability for federal rules and regulations to Congress, requiring any rule or regulation with an economic impact of $100 million or more -- already scored and identified by the White House's Office of Management and Budget as a "major regulation" -- be approved by Congress for an up-or-down vote before taking effect. This reduces the regulatory drag on the economy and imposes additional accountability upon the unelected bureaucrats that conduct "legislation by regulation."

* I have opposed at every turn the President's Climate Action Plan, which would prevent the construction of new coal plants and gradually shutter existing facilities. These regulations would be harmful to the nation's economy -- which receives nearly 40 percent of its electricity from coal -- and absolutely devastating to Kentucky, for which the similar figure is over 90 percent.

* The Administration's regulatory War on Coal has exacerbated the elimination of over 7,000 jobs in eastern Kentucky in just the last few years, putting Kentucky's coal employment at its lowest level since records were first kept by the Commonwealth in 1927. As a cosponsor of H.R. 1829, the Coal Jobs Protection Act, I feel we cannot stand idly by and watch as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deadlocks the coal permitting process. This legislation would put an appropriate time limit on consideration of coal permit applications.

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