Unemployment and poverty that it could cause. To stave off those avoidable deaths, America Needs to rein reinervate the economy. And were listening to ted cruz and mike lee. Each has proposals that could kick start our economy and keep it going strong on a longterm bas bases. I would now like to invite senator cruz and senator lee to join me. Before we start todays discussion. I want to give each senator to offer some introductory remarks. Senator cruz youre up at bat first. Good morning, its a pleasure to join you. Thank you for taking the time to participate and, paula, good to see you and mike, its good to see you and what a testament to the wonders of technology that were able to have an intimate conversation thousands of miles apart and im pretty sure that through the el electrons, this is qualifies as social distancing. The fact that were able to do this so easily is a testament to the opportunities that have been presented by this enormous crisis. As a nation, were facing two simultaneous crisis, a Public Health crisis, the coronavirus pandemic killed over 300,000 people and an economic crisis over 36 Million People have lost their jobs as the economy has ground to a halt. And unusually, in terms of economic crises, this one is not the cause of some fundamental weakness in the economy, its not a recession that was driven by the misallocation of capital, instead the direct results of Government Policies put in place to fight the pandemic and were seeing now millions of americans out of work, over 20 of the American Work force has lost their job in the last two months. That is unprecedented in our lifetimes. You have to go back to the Great Depression to find a comparable economic catastrophe thats struck the American Economy, not only that, but we have millions of Small Businesses that have either gone out of business or are the verge of bankruptcy. So the crisis level is enormo enormous. But that being said, that also means the task Going Forward is enormous. Now, mike and i and all the members of the senate, we have worked together on four separate pieces of legislation, all of which passed overwhelmingly with overwhelming bipartisan support. Those pieces of legislation were theyre often referred to as stimulus legislation, but thats not, in fact, what i think they are. I dont call them stimulus and in fact, what i call them is relief legislation, because they were designed to provide immediate relief, shortterm emergency bridge loans to individuals and families and Small Businesses to help them get through the immediate crises they were facing. The stage were at now, there are some on the democratic side of the aisle that want to keep shovelling money, i tell you the quantity of money to congress had as spent takes your breath away and mike and i at times are not able to breath, the amount of debt our nation is taking to try to get through this crisis. The next stage, where we are now, i believe the next legislation should be recovery legislation, it should be focused not on relief, not on spending more money and just shovelling money at the problem, we cant fix it that way. Instead, the next stage should be focused on tax reform and Regulatory Reform, in other words, lessening the burdens on Small Businesses and job creators because the only way out of this mess, economically speaking, is to get people back to work and that means we need to be looking for policies that help the Small Businesses that are just starting to open up their doors again, that are just starting to see customers again. Policies that help them survive and rehire their employees and hopefully grow and thrive. Weve got to unleash the engine of the American Free enterprise system. The only thing Strong Enough to overcome in catastrophe, i would say on the regulatory side, one good place to start. Every regulation, federal regulation, state regulation and local legislation, everything suspended to deal with the crisis, we should start with a presumption that those regulations should stay suspended Going Forward. If it was deemed helpful for that regulation to be suspended during the time of crisis, it should still be helpful during recovery and i think thats what our focus needs to be is how do we empower Small Businesses to drive Free Enterprise forward and turn our economy around and get people back to work. Senator lee, do you have any opening remarks . Instead. Thanks so much. It really is an honor and a privilege to be with you and to be here with my friend, senator ted cruz. I agree with every word he just uttered, including the word, but, and, and the. One of the many things he said that was so right and appropriate for our time, the notion a that were not going fix our economy with more Government Spending and with more government programs. What we need is to get government out of the way so americans can start helping each other again and thats why i have cosponsored, along with senator cruz, a bill called the right to test act. This is legislation that would let states approve and distribute diagnostic tests when the state or the federal government has declared a Public Health emergency. Its wills why i cosponsored called the prime act, which will help farmers sell their livestock for higher prices and lower meat prices ultimately for consumers in grocery stores. Right now theres a weird bottle neck at meat packing plants and what the prime act does is to allow states to regulate slaughter facilities for meat sold within the same state. We have to remember the federal government was never intended to be this all incompassing regularly body that would regulate purely local activities like mining, agriculture, it wasnt meant to be the exclusive regulator of things like meat packing and yet,s its the federal comandeering that results for higher prices for consumers and lower prices for those who actually produce meat. And thats a problem. The prime act would help us deal with that. We also have to protect businesses from the problems that would otherwise arise. Protect those very businesses that want to reopen from trial lawyers who are trying to make a quick buck. Thats why i support the idea of reforming our federal courts to allow for whats called minimal diversity jurisdiction, this would allow for more businesses to move to federal court where its often easier to defend against trivial lawsuits. The constitution itself in article 3 section two sets out the formula for that and when youve got plaintiffs from one state and defendants from another state. You ought to be able to have in litigation that would otherwise be pending before state court, you ought to be able to have access to federal courts because theres a little more consistency between one federal court and another. I think were going to touch on this a little bit later, but our environmental laws, specifically the National Environmental policy act or nepa has its been caused has been weaponized by radical environmentalists and causing delays to federal Infrastructure Projects throughout the country. You want to know why it takes billions of additional dollars and many years longer to complete the same Infrastructure Projects that our grandparents bills, sometimes in a short time period decades ago, sometimes nepa is the problem. Im working on legislation to put up a shot clock, while protecting the environment. Theyre not at odds with each otherment many of our peer nations that have aggressive nepalike Environmental Protection laws. We stand out like a sore thumb as a country that doesnt put any time constraint on this process and yet, those countries, im thinking of countries like canada, are not exactly environmental hellholes, these are places that protect the environment and at the same time provide a reasonable set of expectation that consumers and businesses can look forward to in the economy. I think as well, we ought to look at the rules and regulations that ted referred to that have been suspended during the crisis. Included within these are many of the occupational licensing regulations. We should ask ourselves, why it is that these regulations were put in the place in the first place if they are prep to be dropped during a real emergency. Now, if we can see this crisis as an opportunity for systemic Regulatory Reform, then our economy can and i believe will come back stronger than ever. I continue to believe that our best days as americans remain ahead of us. In order to do that weve got to make the right choices. Thank you. Senator lee, thank you very much. Let me ask a question and this is a tossup to both of you. You both signed a may 14 letter to the Senate Minority and majority leaders, urging them to support statutory reform to provide regulatory relief for businesses. In the letter, you referred to, quote, paperwork reduction, unquote, and quote, removing outmoded compliance requirements. Now i know youve both mentioned several different possibilities of reforms that we should make. Do you have any specific examples in mind . And would it be possible, you think, to have those included in legislation that well see passed into law before the end of this year . Yeah, ill start with that if youd like. The most concrete example that im thinking of is the nepa reform legislation that im finalizing and should be introduced into the senate soon. This will do a number of things with the nepa process, but the most important reform in it would be to limit the amount of time that can be taken up at each stage of Environmental Review under the National Environmental protection act. Right now theres no limit to it, and so, agencies, between a combination of agency action, court action and preparations for those two separate venues, its not uncommon in this country to see a project, sometimes its a road or a high. Sometimes its an Energy Project or something much more pedestrian, but its not all that uncommon these days to see that taking more than a decade and theres no reason for that. We dont end up with a cleaner environment as a result of it taking that long. The review process itself makes sure we dont wreak havoc on the environment where we might otherwise. No reason they should take a decade. And i put in place requirements to allow the federal government to use corresponding state law document productions, as a substitute for what the federal government would otherwise be providing. If the state has already done something similar, the federal government ought to be able to handle that. This would reduce the overall volume of paper work and its something that could be put into a phase 4 legislative package, particularly if there ends up being an infrastructure component to that. Senator cruise, would you like to answer . So, i emphatically agree with everything that mike said and let me take several different pieces. Nepa reform, speeding up Environmental Review. Mike rightly mentioned that theres a process of building any project can be delayed years or even decades. And the way the system operates now, its not designed actually to protect the environment. Instead, what its designed to do is allow activist groups to use litigation to shut down a project, to shut down development. Its used as a tool simply to kill a project. A little over a week ago, i had a phone call with elon musk, the ceo and founder of tesla and spacex. Elon is hardly a right wing conservative activist, but he has publicly expressed his displeasure with the headquarters of teslas in california and they shut down their factory there, and hes expressed his displeasure with wanting to open up his factory and he has publicly expressed an interest, you know what . If california keeps doing this we may have to move our tesla headquarters out of california and maybe to texas so i called elon, and i said, hey, if you want to come to texas, wed love to have you. Texas is real simple. We love jobs. Anybody creating jobs, wed love to have you in addition to tesla and i think theres a real possibility. Im hopeful that well see tesla come to texas, but in addition to tesla, spacex has substantial operations in texas. This week, today weve got spacex launch, the first launch of u. S. Astronauts from u. S. Soil on u. S. Rocket in over a decade. Spacex will be launching from cape canaveral, but theyve also got a launch facility in south texas. And elon and i talked about their desire to substantial i expand the launch facility in south texas, creating more jobs in south texas and he says the biggest problem is the Environmental Review, we cant expand the operation until we get through the enormous red tape and bureaucracy. So i think that speeding that up is incredibly important. To give you a sense of scope, i actually pulled some numbers so between the year 2000 and 2016 the epa issued a total of 22 rules, estimated by omb to cost 1 billion or more. That was the total of 104. 4 billion dollars. Every other federal agency combined issued only 19 of those rules, that cost an estimated 34. 4 billion. So to put it in perspective, epa alone issued more of those rules than every other agency and more than three times as costly to the economy and so, i think speeding up that review and i think the administration has made positive steps in that regard. And whats interesting, mike and i both serve on the Commerce Committee and Judiciary Committee together, when you bring in local mayors, when you bring in local elected office holders, elected democrats, inevitably they express frustration with, they want to build a road, they want to build a bridge. Its almost impossible, the delay in permit goes on and on and on and i know mike and i both had conversations with the elected democrats and said, look, its your party thats putting those red blocks in the way. And i think this is an opportunity to speed that up and its an opportunity we should take advantage of. Senators, it seems possible that one of the reasons the Environmental Impact statements that get written resemble war and peace in terms of their magnitude and the amount of time it takes to write them, is that agencies might be afraid that unless they do work at length, the courts will strike it down. So, that brings up some general Regulatory Reform questions. There have been a variety of large scale proposals, such as a requirement that congress adopt any rule that has more than a 100 Million Dollar impact on the economy. Could you each address what you think the best way of trying to deal with these broader, general regulatory issues are so that businesses can actually start hiring people again, whether by eliminating environmental obstacles or others . Senator cruz, let me let you go senator lee if you want to do that, thats fine. I thought id let senator cruz go first on this one. I feel confident on this, mike, go ahead. Given the fact of any legislation pending with the wave of a magic wand, it would be the rein act. Registrations from the executive in need of scrutiny and does exactly what you just described, paul. Which is anytime federal regulation deemed economically significant costing over 100 million to comply with were put in place, it could not be selfexecuting. It could take effect as operative law until both houses of congress affirmatively passed it and presented it to the president for signature or veto. If we were to pass Something Like that, it would do a couple of important things that need to happen. Number one, it would restore the letter and spirit of article 1, section 1, clause one. The first section of the article 1 of the confusion, all power invested in the United States shall consist of a senate and house of representatives and article 11 goes on to explain the legislative formula for enacting law. You cannot do it without something passing the house and senate and being submitted to the president for signature or veto. If its vetoed, it can only pass above twothirds of the houses deciding to overturn it. My point is this, over the past few Decades Congress has become increasingly reliant on not passing actual laws, but passing platitudes and passing laws that say we shall have good laws and delegate to department x or department y, the task of writing, interpreting and enforce, rules of generally applicable law that are good. Now make it so. The problem with these laws is that not only are they put in place through a constitutionally suspect mechanism, but they are also suspect as a matter of policy and public acceptability for the same reasons that they violate the letter and spirit of the constitution, meaning, these men and women who inhabited our federal agencies and departments and bureaucrats who write these laws are well educated, well intentioned, hard working and highly specialized, but they dont work for you. You can fire your congressman every two years, you can fire your senators every six years, you cannot fire a bureaucrat. They dont stand for election. Theyre not really accountable to anyone who does in turn stand for election. So, this is really something that we need to do. Its really need a republican or a democratic leader, neither liberal or conservative, this is a constitutional mandate we ought to be fulfilling. It also hat the benefit, bringing them back into law making, making sure when we do something into federal law that its going to be really expensive. Somebody who is on the ballot is going to be on the line for putting it there. The u. S. Regulatory system cost the the American Economy 2 trillion a year, some say its more. Its difficult to ascertain, but those costs are not born simply by large blue chip operations or by billionaires. You know, picture the Monopoly Game piece figures. Theyre born by americas poor and middle class. Theyre the services and for unemployment and underemployment. If we just put in place reform like the reins act, it will be a much better place because once again youd have the American People being in charge of their own government. Senator cruz. So, mike is exactly right on that, when it comes to the reins act. He and i both have fought for years trying to press congress to pass it. When mike talked about the lack of accountability in the current system, sadly for many career politicians in washington, democrats and republicans, thats not above thats a feature, that enables rules to be promulgated with mow accountability. From the perspective of the citizenry, from the inspect of we the people, thats exactly backwards. Look, neither mike nor i, or expect anybody on this call is an anarchist. We believe theres a need for a government. That the congress establishes a government and that there are some regulations that are needed, but if there is to be a rule or regulation that has the consequence of destroying someones job, the person who implements that rule needs to be accountable to the voters. The power of the reins act says at that any economic regulation thats going to cost 100 million or more has to be affirmatively approved from congress and that means, maybe its the case that there is a particular rule thats justified, that needs to be in place to prevent look, nobody wants the air and water poisoned, we dont want our kids killed. There are certainly rules when it comes to pollution, air, water and the like that well agree upon our good rules. As a matter of democratic accountability, if your job is going to be taken away as a result, you need to be able to look me in the eye, you need to be able to look mike in the eye and ask, why did you vote to take away my job. If you dont like the results, throw the bum out. And the elected officials say, gosh, i cant help you, its just the unelected bureaucracy that destroyed your job, and mike is exactly right, also, that the people whose jobs of impacted the most are working class americans. Are blue collar americans or the men and women with calluses on their hands. One of the most dramatic political shifts the last decade is the modern Democratic Party showed between two political groups that were particularly favored children for the democrats. They chose between california environmentalist billionaires or union bosses and union members, and what democrats have done in the last decade is they decided they wanted the money from the california billionaires more than the jobs for the Blue Collar Union members and they counted on the union bosses to whip the votes so they could vote to take away the jobs of millions of steel workers, millions of oil field workers, millions of truckers, millions of construction workers, millions of men and women who work for a living. That, those workers, i believe, as republicans we ought to be the party of jobs. We ought to be the people fighting for those men and women who want to provide for their family and want to provide for their kids. Let me make one other point on this, do you know who is also hurt by these regulations . The environment. Lets take, for example, the endangered species act. So endangered species act, its got a great name and a great purpose. All of us would like to protect endangered species. I dont know anyone who sits around twirling their mustache and laughs at species being driven off planet earth. These are all god creations, and we should be good stewards of the earth. Here is the irony, if an it particular species is listed as an endangered species, thats about the worst thing that can happen to that species. The odds suddenly rise dramatically. That species is going to go from endangered to extinct, why . There are enormous incentives to get rid of that little critter. The endangered species act, you want to drill for oil and gas, you want to build a home development. Or like spacex, build a space force. If theres an activist who wants to stop it all theyve got to do is go find one critter, a snail, fish, bird, whatever they decide, any critter and list it and they can stop the entire environment and by the way the economic incentive you create is for any land owner, if you find one of those animals, your incentive is get rid of it, kill that thing because its going to stop any Economic Development you want to do. Here is reform and legislation ive long advocated. Create economic incentive to grow endangered populations and thats something that elon and i discussed as well. Ive drafted a safe harbor to the endangered species act. I say if theres an endangered species act in the project and the land owner mitigates, in other words, grows the population not just to the current level, but expands the population even more, so west texas theres been repeated litigation trying to shut down oil and gas drilling based on a little lizard that is out there. I said, look, we ought to have an incentive. Fine if weve got a diminished population of lizards. Bring the lizards. I joked, put up a disco ball and play some barry white and do what comes naturally and grow the population. I dont think na the lizard as the right to be on that square inch of land. It may be that you find a suitab suitable habitat, and say lets expand whatever population it is and grow it. That actually would help the environment and the interesting thing is, the activists who bring these lawsuits are not interested in solutions that grow the population. Their objective is to stop the Economic Development. Its a radical objective and contrary to what we need right now, which is jobs and economic growth. Senators, let me ask you about the flip side of the problem that youve just been speaking about, which is one thats been created by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has created some doctrines that say an agencys interpretation of the law sometimes has to be accepted by the courts. They did this in this famous chevron case and they reaffirmed that within the last year in a case called keiser. If thats is that a problem . If thats a problem, how are you and congress go about addressing that . Now, courts cant often times issue the final decision on a matter, its up to the agency. And if congress is also giving the agency extraordinary authority in the delegations, you are just aggravating the problem that its no longer golf advance by congress. How do we address that aspect of the problem . Senator. Who wants to go first . Its a fielders choice. I can do that. Theres a legislative proposal called the separation of powers restoration act that i developed a couple of years ago. I dont remember who ended up filing it, either me or Chuck Grassley who was listed first and the other listed second. The separation of powers act would limit the socalled chevron doctrine, in the middle 80s, chevron versus Natural Resources defense counsel. The chevron adopted a rule that says basically as long as an agency hasnt acted in a way thats really, really wrong, thats obviously wrong, its clearly wrong, then we the courts are not going to use the tools at our disposal to interpret the law. Were instead just going to defer to a federal agencys interpretation of the law by statute enacted by congress. This is a bad doctrine, its not good to tell the judges they cant use the tools that judges ordinarily employ in order to interpret federal law. And so, it ought not be the case that federal agencies of all litigants who appear in court ought to be given unprecedented deference. There is an argument in favor of keeping chevron. Im not a big fan of it, its not a good argument. The argument is without chevron, it would be more difficult for the courts to keep up and at the end of the day, this is Congress Problem at that Congress Needs to fix. Well, on the first point, federal courts are more than up to the challenge of undertaking some additional work in order to interpret statutes and not blindly deferring to a federal agency unless its obviously wrong. As to the second point, theres a point there, and it doesnt mean that we should claim to the chevron doctrine because its wrong. What it does mean is that members of congress ought to be more conscientious in enacting legislation so that we provide enough legislative teeth rather than just deferring to Agency Discretion on everything. Part of the problem is that for decades, youve had members of congress, of both houses and both political parties. Literally, senate and every conceivable part. Willing to defer off to an agency, that needs to stop and thats one. Things thats perpetuating the chevron doctrine. We can do that without waiting for the courts to themselves abandon the doctrine by enacting separation of powers restoration act. And i share many of the concerns had a have been raised by chevron. Weve seen more will chevron deference and reversing that decision. Although at the same time, im one that doesnt think that reversing chevron would be a panacea, that it would solve all the problems. At the end of the day, our system of government only works when you have elected officials that are accountable to the people enacted and in ingauged citizenry. It works better when they take responsibility for their decision and thats the reason why i support the reins act and puts people on the ballot in the position of making a difficult choice. Without chevron, it matters greatly what kind of judges you have on the bench. So chevron itself was a reaction and its a judicial reaction to a judicial activist, to article three judges who were engaged in policy making, who were themselves resolving policy issues and trying to take the mace of the elected legislature and we have seen judicial activism really start to rise up in the courts starting in the 1960s and the 1970s and thats not the role of the judiciary. Both mike and i are passionate about nominating and confirming strong constitutionalists to the federal government bench. If you have judges who themselves are going to exercise restrained, who are not going to step in and decide policy questions on their own, then getting rid of chevron has some real benefits because it makes the hard policy decision, making occur in the legislative branch. If you dont have constitutionalists on the court. If you have activists on the court, getting rid of chevron can be quite problematic. We have seen, position, during the last three and a half years, the trump administration, practically every step the executive has taken, including those clearly explicitly authorized in federal law and given to domestic in may, almost all are challenged in litigation, weve seen activist judges trying to slap down step after step after step that the administration has taken. If you look at, congresss wide authority on immigration, especially the 9th circuit, long been the most evident wing activist court of appeals in the country. Weve seen judges that have basically joined the resistance. Theyve decided they hate trump so never mind what the statutes say, theyre going to step in and say, no, this is bad immigration policy. Probably the most ludicrous example of that is the litigation over daca. Daca, youll recall, is executive amnesty, that president obama decreed for years. Activists asked would he grand am necessity based on executive fiat and obama said over and over again, i dont have the power to do that, i dont have the authority to do that and he said i am not a king. And i guess suddenly his political advisors decided it was good for him to do that and he became a crean decreed for a certain subset of people here illegally would disregard the laws by congress and would ceptionly print fraudulent work papers for people here illegally that statues says cannot work here illegally, the executive would give them a document that nonetheless reports them to fw to work illegally. Fast forward. The trump wanted the right decision is to suspend daca. Were no longer going to refuse to enforce immigration laws, instead the executive is going to follow the laws on the book. In a true alice in wonderland moment, 9th circuit said its illegal for the president to follow the law. That trump cannot say he will follow the law, instead, he must continue to abide by obamas statement to ignore the law and that is still in litigation now, but it gives an example of, theres no basis, based on actual federal statute, based on anything resembling law, to say the executive cannot follow the law. That is that is jumbled idiocy to make that argument and yet, its where the resistant judges find themselves. So the chevron issue is complicated. I support rei reining in chevro but without the judges we dont get the judgment that we want, which is making hard and important policy decisions. Senators, i want to turn in a minute or two to questions from the audience, but i would like to just commend you for your remarks about trying to make sure that the economy takes care of Little People. As a matter of personal privilege, ive thought if it werent for people working in groceries and pharmacies and driving trucks to fill the shelves at groceries and pharmacies, the nation would now be in chaos and its these Little People that are probably the greatest benefit we have going now and one of the least, i think, appreciated. Everyone knows that the Health Care Professionals are putting their lives at risk, but these little blue collar people, the people who get their hands dirty deserve a great deal of credit and i know one area where often times theyre hurt is occupational licensing. And i know senator lee, and senator cruz, its an area that you would like to see reform. Well, that brings up to mind this question. And its a question dealing with telemedicine, because the states generally license the practice of medicine. But given whats happened over the last two months, is telemedicine an idea whose time has finally come . Physiology is the same in all 50 states. Surgical procedures are the same in all 50 states. Pharmaceuticals are the same in all 50 states and all medical School Graduates have to pass the national exam. Is it time for congress to examine telemedicine and what should we do as a nation to make it happen . I would remind you physiology is the same in all 50 states, just remember all things are bigger in texas. My bad, my bad. With that notable exception, youre right. Its not like it would be in courts where if you had to admit someone to practice law in one part of the country, they have to be admitted somewhere else, an argument could be made even there, but with regard to medicine, theres no reason why somebody practicing in massachusetts or new york shouldnt be able to treat somebody in wyoming or montana and in fact, one of the big divides that now exists in this country would be taken down, not just economically, but geographically. Some people in parts of the countries dont always have access to as many doctors or specialists in an area that they might really need. And so, yeah, i think this is an idea whose time has come and has probably been here for a few years, we just havent noticed it, but this is part of the trend that americans throughout the country are waking up to, the fact that in many, many instances, a lot more instances than nod. Occupational licensing serves to incumbents than the public. I had a constituent recently point out to me, the more important the license or the more the less you would want somebody performing a certain procedure without adequate training, the less likely it is that the license itself is going to be a distinguishing characteristic for the end user. For example, this person pointed out to me in one sense the license to fly an airplane that anyone could get could allow somebody to operate either a small cessna or a 747 jumbo jet. Its up to the owner of the jumbo jet to decide whether or not that person who has the pilots license operates the jumbo jet. So, too, with physicians. Once somebody has a medical degree and is a Board Certified medical doctor he or she are able to make certain procedures. If you a certain type of surgery, you look not if they have a medical license as a doctor, but the experience and training and recommendations that that person has. And so, i think in the case of telemedicine, thats especially important. I think that consumers can do a good job. Im not suggesting abolishing all occupational standards, although that would be a net benefit or harm to the country, but we dont have to go that farment certainly when it comes to telemedicine we need this in place and the American People need access to it now, especial especially theyre afraid to go out in public for fear of contaminating somebody or getting contaminated themselves. It hurts the most vulnerable among us. In a prior life back 20 years ago in the early, early 20012003, i was the head of policy at the federal trade commission in the george w. Bush administration, and the ftc is charged with defending consumers and defending commission and so i shared a series of public hearings on barriers to ecommerce and we looked at 10 different industries. Every one of the industries, we looked at telemedicine, looked at education, at contact lenses, we looked at funerals and caskets. We looked at beer and wine, those are five off the top of my head. Every one of them had the identical pattern which is the existing bricks and mortar competitors would go to their local state regulators and say, protect us against these new competitors, ecommerce thats coming in, that there was a report that was written i think in 1999 by the policy institute, which is the think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council so the centrist bill clinton think tank and they wrote a report called the revenge of the intermediary. The middleman getting local regulations to protect them and insist, youve got to go through me and they put all of these barriers to entry. What was fascinating, so we had hearings on all 10 industries. Every single one of the industries there was at least one witness who said, you know, ive looked at these other barriers in the other Nine Industries and, wow, these are terrible. These hurt consumers, they drive up costs, theyre terrible, but our industry theres a reason to protect our industriment one of the more ludicrous ones, i mentioned Funeral Directors and caskets. There are a lot of states that say to sell a casket you must be a licensed mortician, you must do enbalming and prepare a body. The problem is, Funeral Homes make their markup on caskets. Thats where the cash is selling caskets and to do you really love grandma . You need the special deluxe. The problem was, Funeral Homes have started to see competition from other competitors, online competitors selling caskets much cheaper and theres a mastif markup in caskets. Now, pause to think in order whether to sell a pine box you need to know how to enbalm someone. I recognize if youre going to embalm someone you better know how to. Thats one example. Its all about the markup. Contact lenses in mikes state, 1800contacts is based in utah, they sell contacts online. And the optometrists hate that. They do the exam, but they markup the contacts so they dont want the competition. The institute for justice based in d. C. Does a fabulous job of bringing litigation on behalf of people, Small Business owners who want to compete who are being prevented. Hair braiders are a great example where you have cosmetology boards that shut down if you wants youve got a lot of instances of africanamerican young women who want to start a business hair braiding. Sometimes they have to go through a year, two years of certification and training, its a barrier to entry. If youre a single mom, you may have kids and cant do all th this. The market can test that its not like theres a Massive Public safety issue if you braid hair wrong, ive got to say. My daughters are braiding my wifes hair most nights. If you do it wrong, your customers will leave. I think focusing on removing barriers to Small Businesses and entrepreneurs is very powerful in terms of unleashing the economy. Twothirds of all new jobs come from Small Businesses and occupational licensing serves as a barrier to make it more expensive for more Small Businesses to enter. I think as conservatives, as libertarians, as believers in economic liberty. We ought to be fighting for the rights of entrepreneurs. It helps, it helps the little guy, it helps young people and africanamericans and hispanics and single moms and those without vast resources to be able to start a business and compete and i think thats very powerful. Gentlemen, let me turn to some questions from the audience. The first question actually deals with Small Businesses. We have businesses, large and small, that have visited production lines from the widgets that they ordinary Northwest Airlines make over to the production of various types of Safety Equipment and the like that are necessary to response to the pandemic. And it takes a while to shift over to the production line and when we no longer need those sorts of pieces of equipments and the numbers produced, these companies will shift back. During that period when they shift back, they wont be able to sell because theyre in the process of requipping their facilities. The question is, what sort of situation will happen . Will there be another lag period where businesses turn down as they start shifting out of equipment for the pandemic and back to the role of equipments . What if anything can be done with this and hopefully this will go rather quickly. Is that going to slow down the everall recovery . And so, ill jump in on this one. Its a good question. It depends on the circumstances in which the business changed their production line. But let me take a slightly different tack on this question. I think the most important and far reaching Foreign Policy cons fence of this pandemic is going to be a fundamental reassessment of the United States relationship with china, that china, the communist government of china bears enormous responsibility and culpability for in pandemic. They lied, they covered it up. They punished, the heroic chinese whistleblowers who tried to stop this pandemic early on. One of the things this crisis illustrated is the incredible vulnerability that the United States has to china in terms of our supply chain and Critical Infrastructure. Lets take, for example, medical equipment. Ppe. An enormous percentage of the ppe in the world is produced in china, whether its masks, gowns, gloves. Pharmaceuticals, the Chinese Communist government systematically, strategically targeted pharmaceuticals and did so not from an economic perspective, but National Security, where they targeted them to go over pharmaceuticals and banks the u. S. Production, and the massive amount of u. S. Pharmaceuticals, whether youre talking antibiotics, Blood Pressure medication, cancer medication, alzheimers medication, antianxiety medication, antidepression medication, all sorts of medication we rely on china is getting more and more of a monopoly of producing and the vulnerability of that was highlighted when one state owned newspaper in china explicitly threatened to cut off pharmaceuticals from the United States as a tool of economic warfare. Now, if they were to do that, thats not just economic warfare, thats actual real warfare, thats cutting off needed medicines and literally threatening the lives potentially of millions of americans. Personally, i think it is foolish to allow ourselves to be so dependent on china for our supply chain that the lives of americans hang in the balance of the whims. Communist government of china and i fully expect over the next coming weeks and months and years were going to have an extended debate about how to decouple our economies and how to ensure that Critical Infrastructure is here in the United States. That means more pharmaceutical production, so the question about lines that have been shifted over to ppe or pharmaceutical production, im hopeful some of those lines will stay producing it, but i think we may well be looking at tax and regulatory policy to try to make it easier for Critical Infrastructure to actually survive in the United States and withstand chinas assault. I can tell you one example of legislation i just introduced, looking at Rare Earth Minerals. A air Rare Earth Minerals needed for our technologies and weve almost stopped producing them and mining them in the United States. The regulatory costs are so high about you also, china has moved in to capitalize and monopolize Rare Earth Minerals. So i introduced legislation for strong beneficial tax treatment for Rare Earth Minerals here, if china cuts us off, we dont want our National Security to be vulnerable to the whims of communist china. I believe that china represents the single greatest geopolitical threat to the United States over the next century and i think were going to have very extensive discussions to make sure that china doesnt have a strang stranglehold on the ability of america to defend itself. Let me ask, historically the Supreme Court allows the states to pretty much regulate states as they see fit. We dont treat economic liberty as being as valuable as other personal liberties. Given the fact that we saw have to get millions of people back to work, is it time for that to change . Is it time for the Supreme Court to reexamine the very low level of protection it gives to economic liberties, seeing as how we have millions of people out of work and we need to get them back to be productive members. Economy . State laws that are arbitrary, therefore, only hurt the entire nation in this regard. Is it time for the Supreme Court to look at the jurisprudence or congress to preempting the burdensome regulations . This is a tossup. Its a question from an audience member and its for each of you. In so far as theyre looking at 1904 Supreme Court decision locker versus new york, i would not return to that, its a dangerous form of jurisprudence that looks to what we now all substantive due process as a tool for the federal judiciary to tell states what they cant do. I understand the point. Im a huge believer in economic liberty. It factors into every decision i make and i think its important to keep the federal courts and congress for that matter on federal issues, issues covered by the u. S. Law or by the u. S. Constitution. I think one of the ways that the most profound way that federal lawmakers and federal jurists can defend and protect economic liberty is focusing on restoring the twin eventually protection of the constitution. A lot of times when we think about constitutional protections, we think about substantive limitations, its every bit as important, i would argue. Like Justice Scalia before he passed an i away a few years ago, theyre not worth more than the paper theyre printed on unless you have federalism and separation of powers in place. Youve got the vertical protection of federalism that keeps most of the power at state and local level and horizontal separation of powers. And within we will have one branch that makes the law, one branch that interprets it, and one that enforces it. And our drift away from federalism helped perpetuate powers. In general, if we started to restore these things and the assistance. Courts for saying, this or that doesnt belong in the federal government because its a purely local activity. Likewise if theyd enforce separation of hours for congress not to openendedly, and that passes making the law. That, too, would have the effect of opening up economic liberty. Gentlemen, we have a minute left so i want to give you 30 seconds to offer final remarks, senator cruz, youre up first. Im going to use my 30 seconds to emphatically echo what mike just said. Listen, i am passionate about economic liberty, but im equally passionate about the structural constraints in our constitution and federalism enables all 50 states to be what Supreme CourtJustice Louis brandeis called democracy. Idea and i think new york has Constitutional Authority to do it. If california wants to and ask socialized medicine at thermal policy and yet california as a Constitutional Authority to do it in the beauty of federalism is if you dont like it you can pack up and move and come to a place to protect your so i dont think we should have judges making policy decisions even if striking down bad policy, instead it out of the democratic accountability with a structural constraints that are in thecy constitution. Senator lee . Federalism and separation of powers tend, when we follow, to give more americans access to more of the kind of government they want in the last of kind of government they dont want. When we hearle people in this dy and age talked about how unfortunate it is that its grown so contentious in washington, there should be no surprise to them that this is occurred as a result of our concentration of power excessively in the hands of the few within washington, d. C. You put all of the eggs in that basket you will have just like you had a Homeowner Association that was ritual in charge ofin trash removal and lighting in the common areas. Once it starts expanding into also what kind of grass and flowers you cant play it and tn start telling you how many servings of greenlee to vegetables your children have to eat every single day, the broader is expansive authority. The more contentious and unsustainable, that association is going to be. The federal government is like that and its exceeded its mandate. Its up to the American People, the American Voters and those they lead to the senate of the house of representatives and the whitee house to restore that balance that we relinquish long ago. Senator ted cruz, senator lee, a gap of the Heritage Foundation and personally i wanw to thanknk you very much for taking the time to join with us today, to give us your views, and for fighting for the freedoms and liberties that you both have described. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. God bless. We are adjourned. U. S. Senate meets this afternoon at 3 p. M. Eastern. They will resume work on Senate Judicial nominations. Later they returned her attention to the nomination of white a senior associate counsel brian miller to be the First SpecialInspector General for pandemic recovery. Senators may work in legislation providing greater flexibility to Small Businesses who receive Paycheck Protection Program loans here and possibly more debate on the fisa reauthorization bill. Watch the senate live on cspan2. Tonight on the communicators former fcc commissioner susan ness talks about ways to reduce hate speech and extremism online. Companies when they find terrorist content, able tag so that others dont copy it. And theres no much better cooperation amid even two years ago but there still estimates about needs to be done. Watch the communicators tonight at eight eastern on cspan2. On wednesday former Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein testifies before the senate Judiciary Committee on the fisa application process used to drink fbi investigation into possible ties between the Trump Campaign and russian officials. The fbis investigation was eventually taken over by special Counsel Robert Mueller who rosenstein appointed in 2017. Watch live coverage of the hearing beginning at 10 a. M. Eastern on cspan, on demand t cspan. Org, or listen live wherever you are on the free cspan radio app. Sign up today for cspans word for word providing indian update from washington straight to your email inbox about the coronavirus pandemic, response and state, the white house on the reopening of economy and the port updates from congress. Sign up today. Its easy. Go to cspan. Org connect and enter your email address in the word for word signup box. 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