Saturday in the GOP weekly address, Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) told the story of Wyoming residents Andy and Katie Johnson who built a state-government approved pond in their front yard that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) then ordered removed.
Barrasso said, “The Johnsons now face fines for more than $37,000 every day until they remove the pond. This is what’s happened to government in America. It’s gotten so aggressive, so inflexible and so unyielding — and seemingly for so little purpose.”
Barrasso estimated that the Obama administration 2,500 new regulations over the last six years will cost the U.S. economy “a staggering $680 billion dollars.”
Barrasso said the Obama administration overreach, “includes things like irrigation ditches, isolated ponds — even low points in the landscape where water might collect after a heavy rain. The consequences of this new federal authority will be severe. Local land-use decisions will now be driven by Washington bureaucrats. And this new water rule is only one of thousands of regulations that Washington is churning out.”
He added, “What the administration wont tell you is that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress oppose many of these regulations including the new rules on waters in the Untied States. Senators Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) all Demarcates joined us to change these water regulations. Yet common sense changes to all this rule making are being been blocked by the President and the liberal Democrat leadership in the Congress. Even the courts have dealt the Obama administration serious setbacks to its regulatory rampage. But by the time the courts finally act the damage is already done Those jobs are going and communities suffer.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.