Congresswoman Julie Fedorchak speaks out against regulatory state on House Floor

Below are her remarks as prepared for delivery:   

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in saying it’s past time to reduce the regulatory state in this nation. 

We are crippling our businesses. We are smothering new ideas before they can even take flight. We are stifling innovation. 

These regulations are coming from runaway executive branch agencies filled with unaccountable staff who have never experienced the realities of turning a wrench, tilling a field, or turning a profit.  

As a former energy regulator, I know the value of smart, efficient regulation.  

For example, in North Dakota, electric utilities are required to follow least-cost planning, this ensures high reliability of our power systems at the lowest possible cost to customers. This is smart regulation. 

We have had, in Washington, just the opposite. 

We had the Biden administration setting the staffing requirements for nurses in every nursing home in North Dakota.  

Rather than improving care, this, like many other last-minute Biden regulations, will make it harder if not impossible for North Dakota organizations and businesses to do their jobs.  

The rule and regulation mania of the last administration was historic.  

According to a study by the National Association of Manufacturing, the total cost of federal regulations in 2022 was more than $3 trillion—roughly 12% of the U.S. GDP. 

Make no mistake, businesses don’t just take on these costs. 

Hardworking American families pay for these rules and regulations in the price of anything they buy. 

What’s worse, these regulations burden small businesses the most, including North Dakota farmers, ranchers, energy producers, manufacturers and main street businesses.  

I heard this loud and clear from North Dakotans in every corner of the state.  

That’s why my first official action as a member of Congress was to send a letter to President Trump and then-Governor Burgum that identified 20 burdensome energy regulations. 

These regulations were created by federal agencies—not Congress, the elected representatives of the people—and they pose a major threat to American energy producers and energy workers.  

The Trump administration is already taking bold action to repeal these regulations—and they’ve stepped on the gas even further by requiring agencies to identify 10 regulations to repeal for every new one issued.  

For North Dakota businesses, workers, and families, this is certainly welcomed news.  

[Yesterday], the House passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, which I was very proud to support. 

This legislation will allow Congress to rescind multiple agency rules simultaneously under the Congressional Review Act authority if they have been issued during the final year of a President’s term.   

Why is this is needed?  The Biden administration issued a staggering 1,400 regulations during the 60-day CRA lookback window.  

Several of these regulations have significant impacts on North Dakota.  

For example, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management finalized its sweeping new Resource Management Plan for North Dakota the very last week of the Biden administration. 

This plan will shut down leasing on millions of acres of federal land in North Dakota, including 99% of the Federal coal acreage and 44% of federally owned oil and gas mineral acres.  

Due to the nature of mining, this rule would make a majority of North Dakota’s coal reserves uneconomic to mine. 

North Dakota isn’t alone in this however, as the BLM finalized a separate resource management plan to effectively end all future coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, affecting Montana and Wyoming.  

If these two plans are equally bad, why shouldn’t we be able to use the CRA process to repeal them together instead of doing it one-by-one?  

I’m working with my Senate Colleagues from North Dakota in beginning the CRA process to repeal the North Dakota plan, and will support efforts of other states to do the same with their Midnight Rules that are strangling their business. 

As demand for energy reaches record highs, we should be unleashing American energy production—not shutting it down. 

Doing so will help reduce America’s debt, lower energy prices for hardworking families, reduce global emissions, and bolster our national security. 

We must start reining in bureaucratic overreach and putting power back where it belongs —with the American people. 

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues in Congress and the Trump administration to rein in the administrative state and help make life better for American workers and families.  

Madam Speaker, I yield back.   

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