Addressing the Juneau Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, U.S. Sen Dan Sullivan, R-Juneau, said Alaska may suffer if the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate with November\u2019s national elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually think for the good of the Alaska economy, keeping the Senate … majority in Republican hands is good,\u201d he told a packed meeting hall at the Juneau Moose Lodge.<\/p>\n
Sullivan spoke at the conclusion of an extended stay in Southeast Alaska while the U.S. Senate is on its Labor Day break. Congress is expected to return to regular work next week, and Sullivan jetted into the cloudless blue sky after delivering about 30 minutes of remarks and answering a pair of questions from the Chamber audience.<\/p>\n
According to the latest forecast from the New York Times\u2019 statistics and polling branch, The Upshot, Democrats have a 56 percent of earning a majority of at least 51 members in the 100-person Senate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn November, it\u2019s going to be a battle,\u201d Sullivan said. <\/p>\n
The Senate is currently controlled by the Republican Party, which holds 54 seats to the Democrats\u2019 46. Those figures include independents that caucus with the two parties.<\/p>\n
Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska (and running for election this November), both hold significant leadership roles in the Senate because their party holds a majority.<\/p>\n
Sullivan implied that Democratic control of the Senate would significantly hamper his efforts to reduce federal regulation and improve the economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can grow our economy, not just locally but nationally,\u201d he told the Chamber.<\/p>\n
He advised listeners to not believe that lower rates of economic growth are the \u201cnew normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you hear \u2018new normal,\u2019 don\u2019t accept it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sullivan said his attempt to force government agencies to retract one regulation for every new regulation they add was defeated by \u201cradical environmental groups\u201d that tore away the Democrats who supported the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t get one Democrat who voted for it,\u201d he said, even though he supposes the measure would get \u201c90 percent in favor\u201d support if Americans were asked door-to-door about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about regulations is that they\u2019re taxes,\u201d Sullivan said, because they require companies and individuals to spend time or money to meet regulatory standards.<\/p>\n
Sullivan spoke at length about the time it takes to obtain federal permits for infrastructure projects and explained that it takes much longer to permit some projects than it does to build them.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the regulatory reform issues, I know \u2014 because I\u2019m part of it \u2014 the Republican majority in the Senate wants to get some of these reforms done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter James Brooks at 523-2258 or james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Addressing the Juneau Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, U.S. Sen Dan Sullivan, R-Juneau, said Alaska may suffer if the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate with November\u2019s national elections. \u201cI actually think for the good of the Alaska economy, keeping the Senate … majority in Republican hands is good,\u201d he told a packed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}