U.S. Sens. John Hoeven (R-ND) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) said that less government spending, fewer regulations and lower taxes are needed to drive economic growth on Thursday during a Ripon Society.
Hoeven, who served as the governor of North Dakota and as the president of the Bank of North Dakota, the country’s only state-owned bank, before be was elected to the Senate in 2010, said the country needs to get back to fundamentals.
“That’s what I tried to do as governor of North Dakota, and I think that’s what Mike tried to do as well,” Hoeven said. “By the fundamentals, I mean we have to reduce the regulatory burden. We have to reform the tax code – make it simpler and fairer, and make sure revenue comes from economic growth and not higher taxes. We have to implement a territorial system so that we get revenues that are overseas to come back. We have to do more to address our debt and deficit, and balance the budget. And we need to strongly support our military. Americans need to feel safer at home and abroad.”
Rounds, who spent eight years as the governor of South Dakota and many more years in the private sector, said that regulatory burdens and election year politics have maddened the people of his state.
“They’re mad at Washington, D.C., because they see Washington, D.C. as imposing its will on the American people,” Rounds said. “Take a look at the regulatory environment. We live under one million federal regulations today. And they’re creating more at the rate of 3,400-3,500 more per year. Most egregious is the EPA. Think about what they’ve done – the EPA alone. The cost of complying with EPA regulations averages, over the last 10 years, $42 billion a year. The total cost of regulatory compliance in the United States today? To put it into perspective, you know how much you pay in personal income taxes? You pay $1.4 trillion in personal income taxes. By contrast, the cost of complying with federal regulations today in America is over $1.9 trillion. That’s not sustainable.”
Rounds cited a Congressional Budget Office report that found that 99 percent of federal revenues would be allocated to federal debt or mandatory payments on entitlements by 2026.
“That leaves nothing earned in terms of taxes collected to pay for defense, education, research, other health care,” Rounds said. “When we talk about having a crisis, it’s not coming — it is here now. So when we talk about having leadership at the White House level, let’s start talking about who has a vision out there that promotes those goals.”