Working Together to Fight Overreach

As more red tape flows from the executive branch, I remain committed to standing up for Nebraskans against an overgrown bureaucracy.

Throughout 2016, I have written often about my legislative efforts to fight government overreach. This includes my bill to increase consumer choice at the fuel pump by allowing E15 to be sold year-round, my amendment to keep meat on the menu for our troops, my bill to block interpretive federal rulemaking which threatens farmers’ access to anhydrous ammonia, and my legislation included in this year’s Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization to help small airports.  

Hearing directly from Nebraskans about how regulations impact their lives and livelihoods was the inspiration for my Regulation Rewind initiative, which I started in 2014 to identify unnecessary and overly burdensome regulations which hurt economic growth, limit opportunities for rural Americans, are inconsistent with the law, or are unfair.  

In addition to introducing my own bills, an important part of Regulation Rewind is lending my support to legislative efforts by my colleagues. Working together, we can stand against more abuses of power and burdensome rules.

Regulations can directly violate Americans’ constitutional rights. In January, the FBI announced it had stopped processing appeals for individuals who were erroneously denied the right to own a firearm by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). I am a cosponsor of H.R. 4980, the Firearm Due Process Protection Act, which mandates action on NICS appeals within 60 days and requires the FBI to report to Congress annually on NICS appeals statistics.

Too often, regulations are harmful to our economy. A Department of Labor (DOL) rule scheduled to take effect December 1 raises the salary threshold for workers to receive overtime pay from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. Many employers are concerned an increase this large will force them to reduce employees’ hours, move some employees from salaried to hourly status, or cut wages in order to comply. With 190 of my colleagues, I cosponsored H.R. 4773, the Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act, which requires DOL to nullify its current rule, conduct an economic analysis on how the change would affect employers, and minimize the impact on employers in any subsequent rulemaking.

Other regulations are simply unnecessary, such as the red tape currently preventing some hospice patients from keeping their own doctors. Medicare’s hospice benefit provides in-home, palliative end-of-life care for beneficiaries diagnosed as having six months or fewer to live. As part of the benefit, the patient may also choose to continue seeing his or her own physician. However, because federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics are subject to a separate payment structure, physicians they employ are not eligible to serve hospice patients. I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 5799, the Rural Access to Hospice Act, to address this issue.

At its worst, an overgrown bureaucracy can have dire consequences for people’s lives. In 2014, numerous reports stated at least 40 veterans had died while awaiting care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The severe mismanagement of the VA was due in part to difficulties involved with making necessary staffing and organizational changes. Because these personnel issues are ongoing, I cosponsored H.R. 5620, the VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act, which makes it easier to remove VA employees based on poor performance or misconduct and reforms the process of handling whistleblower cases at the VA.

These are just a few examples from this year’s Regulation Rewind. If you would like to review a more complete list of my efforts to fight executive overreach, please visit AdrianSmith.house.gov/RegulationRewind. Together, we can continue to block and reverse the regulatory burdens impacting Nebraskans and people across the country.