Alaska’s junior U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan spoke at a packed joint chamber of commerce luncheon in Kenai today, relaying that while the U.S. faces challenges, overall the country is in good shape.
U.S. Senator Sullivan: “It’s not just what I believe, it’s actually when you look at our comparative advantages, whether it’s our economic opportunities, whether it’s our entrepreneurial spirit, whether it’s our military, our energy, our agriculture, our fisheries, our universities, the list is very very long where we are still in many ways the dominant power in the world. And I think sometimes it’s important to bring that message home.”
While speaking to attendees, he used a poker analogy of world powerhouses like the U.S., Russia, China, and Japan around a table with the United States holding almost all the aces.
Nevertheless, the senator acknowledged that our country has challenges, the first of which he deemed to be government overreach.
U.S. Sen. Sullivan: “A new airport runway at the Seattle airport, it took 15 years to get the federal permitting permission to build a runway. Fifteen years, that can’t be good for the country at all. It takes on average 5-6 years to get the federal permits to permit a bridge in the United States.”
Senator Sullivan also used Royal Dutch Shell’s recent Arctic endeavors as an example of federal over regulation saying while it impacts corporations, the biggest effects are seen by the middle class.
He recently introduced a bill known as the RED Tape Act to congress; RED is an acronym for regulations endanger democracy. The legislation would ask federal agencies to sunset one restriction each time they introduce another.