Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT, criticized the United States’ regulatory climate in Salt Lake on Thursday at the Utah Solutions Summit.
During his introduction to the conference, Sen. Lee stood next to two stacks of paper, each about 10 feet tall, to illustrate how much regulation federal bureaucracies created last year. In calling for less regulation of commerce, labor, and education, Lee pointed to Congress as being the root of the problem. He says members of congress have passed responsibility of regulation to government agencies so that they don’t have to weigh in on them, and that’s got to stop.
“I think we need to take that option, the option of punting, of subcontracting, away from them," Lee says. "I think we need to start moving the regulatory process out of the namely faceless regulatory arena and put it back into congress where you’ve got men and women who work for the people.”
Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma was also a featured speaker at the event. Like Lee, he complained about what he called the burden of over regulation.
“The Federal Government is now this behemoth that there isn’t one aspect of your life that they don’t touch. So, if you really want to limit the impact of federal regulation we have to go back and embrace what our founders believed. And that is in a limited central government with a very limited role with everyone else left to the states and the people,” he says.
The summit also included discussions on local and state regulations. Those panels featured city leaders, business representatives, and leaders of state regulating agencies. While they had some criticism for state regulators, they also agreed that Utah is doing a great job of finding a good balance.