This Week in Washington

This week, we passed two pieces of legislation that would protect the scientific process and reform the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is imperative that scientific data is balanced and unbiased, however, under our current system there are no requirements to prove their findings. I believe it is irresponsible for taxpayer dollars to be used to enforce onerous regulations that are based on faulty science. Scientific developments require transparency and reproducibility, and the EPA should have nothing to hide from the American people. This is why I was pleased to support the passage of H.R. 1029, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2015 and H.R. 1030, the Secret Science Reform Act of 2015.

Later in the week, the House of Representatives passed S.J. Res 8, legislation that expresses disproval of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) “ambush rule.” This rule expedites union elections and forces employers to give substantial personal information about their employees to unions without consent or confidentiality standards in place. This rule cripples the rights of hard working Americans to make careful, informed decisions about whether to join a union by providing them with significantly less time to decide how they will vote. These are not policies that help the American worker and bolster the economy – they are policies that are part of a culture of union favoritism that cause nothing but harm. To express my extreme disproval of this rule I proudly voted for this legislation to preserve the rights of workers to make informed and independent decisions.