Guest Post: REGS Agenda Seeks To Cut Red Tape

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Written By:
Rep. Rick Berg

Dec 15, 2011
2:49pm

As I talk with North Dakotans, it’s clear that we are all frustrated with Washington. Obamacare is a disastrous law that 70 percent of North Dakotans did not want. Unemployment has remained unacceptably high, making it clear that President Obama’s nearly trillion dollar government stimulus didn’t work. Washington bailed out Wall Street, while Main Street continues to bear the brunt of these out-of-touch policies. And Washington persistently fails to uphold its responsibility to balance the nation’s budget.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to pursue overreaching regulations that stifle job creation by adding more red tape and uncertainty for North Dakota’s families and small business. These burdensome government regulations stand as one of the biggest threats to our national economic recovery. We need to take serious steps today to halt the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach so that small businesses can spend their resources on growing and hiring more workers – not having to adapt to ever-changing and costly one-size-fits-all rules.

That’s why I’d like to announce my R.E.G.S. Agenda: Reduce the red tape. Empower the states. Grow the economy. Stop President Obama’s overreach.

This agenda is the result of talking with North Dakotans this past year and hearing about the impact that senseless regulations have on North Dakota schools, farmers and ranchers, energy producers and small businesses.

During my recent regulations tour, I spoke with energy providers who were concerned about the EPA’s Regional Haze requirements that could cost North Dakota $700 million to comply with. Farmers told me about ever-changing fuel storage mandates that added new costs. And I heard how new EPA regulations on gas generators could cost a North Dakota school district a quarter million dollars—not because the school district is using the generator more than they are allowed, but because the EPA just doesn’t like which hours they are choosing to use it.

It’s also the product of the feedback I’ve received from North Dakotans at the ten public town halls I’ve held this year and through the countless emails, letters, and phone calls.

The message is clear: Washington is not the solution – it’s the problem. To get our economy moving again and our country back on track, President Obama and Congressional leaders could learn a lot from the way we do things here in North Dakota.

In response to these concerns, I have introduced legislation that would halt President Obama’s overreach that threatens the economic growth we have seen here in North Dakota. And last week the House passed a major component of my R.E.G.S. Agenda –the REINS Act, which I helped introduce in January. This bill would stop the runaway executive rulemaking by requiring Congress to take an up-or-down vote on all new major rules before the Administration can force them on the American people—much like what we do here in the North Dakota Legislature. This bill now awaits action in the Senate, along with 28 other job-creating bills the House has passed with bipartisan support.

But this agenda is not simply the sum of the past year. It’s also a path moving forward to rein in the overreaching, out-of-touch government regulations that burden North Dakota’s small businesses, farms and ranches each and every day. I will continue to add to this agenda and use it as a vehicle to fight back against job-killing regulations that threaten our nation’s job creators’ ability to create jobs and grow our economy.

For more information about the R.E.G.S. Agenda, please visit www.berg.house.gov/REGS-Agenda or join the conversation at www.facebook.com/RepRickBerg.

Rick Berg is serving his first term as North Dakota’s at-large member of the House of Representatives and is currently seeking the NDGOP nomination to run for the US Senate