Bishop promises more responsible federal policy

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) told the General Session audience that the trend of regulatory authority returning to Congress in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Better Way plan would ultimately mean more responsive federal policy making.

“In the horizontal division of powers.. if the executive bureaucratic agencies...and you don’t like it, what recourse do you have?” he said.  “If you want a system so that ppl’s voices are heard, you have to go through that nasty thing called politics.”

A Better Way, Bishop said, has nothing to do an inter-branch power struggle, he said, “It’s based on the principle that people are better heard through their elected representatives.”

He further emphasized his case for de-centralized government power.

“If the government was about making stuff, then there’s an economy of scale that is significant,” he said. “But we’re not creating a product, we’re delivering a service,” and in that case, more local control is appropriate.

This concept is not Republican or Democrat, it’s not even conservative or liberal,” he said. “There are some areas of the country that may want robust government and indeed if they want it and are willing to pay for it and not impose it on anybody else, let them do it. That is the beauty of our system of government known as federalism: You have the right to do things the wrong way without Washington telling you what is right and what is wrong. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

He related a story of an East German child who visited a store in West Germany and marveled at the superfluous variety of sugar available to purchase, and his own preference for vanilla ice cream but the appreciation that he had his choice of 31 flavors.

“The choice is the important part,” he said. “And that is what we need to be doing to make sure that power and ability and regulations are moved back to state and local governments where they are closer to the people and can be done in a better way.”