Taking Washington's pulse
Washington, D.C. -- Though much of Tuesday morning at the NLBMDA's Spring Meeting & Legislative Conference was spent reviewing talking points and policy agendas, attendees did get a chance to ask questions of two Washington insiders, who offered their two cents on the current political climate (and especially the prospect of what's to come in this election cycle).
Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) offered an impassioned point of view on the government's role in creating opportunity (versus crushing it). He added that he started out as a kid pouring concrete, and that in his view, the people who write the regulations often have no idea how they'll impact the people directly affected by them.
An example: the EPA recently came to Wyoming and mandated lead paint training in Minneapolis, which is roughly 800 miles away.
"If you do everything right to comply with regulations on page 320, in some way, you've violated the regulations on page 124," he said.
Meanwhile, Congressman Scott Tipton (R-CO) offered a message of imbalance in government.
"The government is overreaching, overpromising, over-taxing, and underperforming," he said.
Many of the problems, in Tipton's view, stem from the fact that only 18% of Congress has worked in the private sector.
"When we look at the rules and regulations in this country, we're now spending, as businesses, $2 trillion on regulations. Thousands of regulations in the pipe, and every one has costs associated with them."
A good portion of the NLBMDA's 2016 National Policy Agenda puts the spotlight on regulations, namely to introduce flexibility that will ease the burden on small businesses that are chafing under a one-size-fits-all approach to federal regulations, as well as to reconsider the overtime rule.
"The government is approaching this from a fine and punish, rather than a help and improve standpoint," he added. "Let's get sensible policy. The stoplight was a good idea, but do you put it at an intersection or in the middle of a hayfield?"
The questions on everyone's mind, though, brought the conversation back to the presidential election.
Barrasso offered his two cents on Hillary, Trump, and Obama (in order):
"Hillary won't be able to run an uplifting campaign [like Obama and Reagan did]. She'll have to make her opponent more detested than her."
"I have misjudged his strength from the very beginning, and I didn't think he'd be able to defy gravity for this long. He's speaking to a lot of people who have been disengaged from the political process for a long time."
"In 2014, a number of new Republican senators [were elected]. The President invited a number of us to the White House; we had lunch. He said, 'well, I'm not really going to listen to the voters this year because a lot of people didn't come out and vote. I'm going to do what people elected me to do."