{"id":9013,"date":"2017-01-02T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T17:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/sullivan-hopeful-heading-into-2017\/"},"modified":"2017-01-02T09:00:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T17:00:44","slug":"sullivan-hopeful-heading-into-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/sullivan-hopeful-heading-into-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Sullivan hopeful heading into 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> Like all members of Congress, Sen. Dan Sullivan has a long list of to-dos. Tops on that list right now is an issue he\u2019s outwardly excited about tackling nearly as soon as the new Congress gavels in Jan. 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy, the economy, the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A strident conservative, Sullivan noted in a Dec. 20 interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce that he has spent the entirety of his career in public office \u2014 from being Alaska\u2019s attorney general and Natural Resources commissioner under Republican governors to his current seat as the state\u2019s junior U.S. senator \u2014 pushing back against President Barack Obama\u2019s domestic policies that he says put environmental interest groups ahead of the nation\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis administration has been overseeing the weakest economic recovery, maybe in U.S. history, from a major recession,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n

He generally refers to Obama\u2019s two-term presidency as the \u201clost decade of economic growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I know is to fight (the Obama administration) and have to deal with federal government agencies that don\u2019t want to help us achieve our full potential in terms of economic and resource development opportunities. I\u2019m very hopeful that\u2019s going to start to change,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n

Investing in infrastructure is one of the primary ways he said the country could get back to annual economic growth at least back to historical norms of nearly 4 percent. U.S. GDP has been below 3 percent since 2006, according to the World Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to cut spending but not on infrastructure,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cInfrastructure is a form of good (spending) because it unleashes the private sector and we\u2019re an infrastructure poor state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Infrastructure in an economic sense usually refers to roads, bridges and airports \u2014 those things that not only spur construction activity but also make transporting goods faster, cheaper and safer.<\/p>\n

However, in Alaska, the need goes further and was partly addressed in the latest federal water spending bill. The Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation, or WIIN, Act, signed by the president Dec. 16, touches Alaska on several positive fronts, according to Sullivan.<\/p>\n

First, it authorizes $300 million in federal grants through 2021 for the roughly 30 rural communities in the state that still lack running water and sewer systems. The original Senate bill had nearly $1.5 billion to fund the full need, Sullivan said, but since the House bill had nothing the negotiated amount ended up being much less.<\/p>\n

State funding for the effort to get Alaskans off \u201choney buckets\u201d has followed the overall decline in the state budget.<\/p>\n

In addition to funding standard Army Corps of Engineers annual maintenance of Alaska\u2019s ports and harbors as federal water bills usually do, the WIIN Act also directs the Army to conduct a feasibility study for a Defense-directed Arctic deep-draft port.<\/p>\n

The Corps of Engineers paused its study of a deepwater port near Nome in 2015 after Shell nixed its long-term offshore oil and gas exploration plan in the Chukchi Sea.<\/p>\n

A directive in the legislation to have the Corps include the strategic benefits of a large Arctic port from the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security should help move the project along because they are \u201ccan-do actors\u201d with \u201ca serious budget,\u201d Sullivan described.<\/p>\n

Getting to building infrastructure effectively will also require major regulatory overhaul on the federal level, according to Sullivan, an issue he and President-elect Donald Trump are both keen on.<\/p>\n

The senator said the incoming president was very interested in the Red Tape Act that Sullivan submitted last year during a phone call between the two. The bill would require the agencies regulate development projects to sunset a regulation each time a new one is promulgated. Trump might want to up the ante.<\/p>\n

\u201c(It\u2019s) one in-one out. He\u2019s like, \u2018No Dan, it\u2019s one in-two out.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Alright good, one in-two out,\u2019\u201d Sullivan said, recalling the conversation. \u201cHe said, \u2018Send me the bill; I want to work with you guys on this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On those lines, the Rebuild America Now Act should be submitted early in the next Congress, according to Sullivan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking like we\u2019re going to have a federal government that\u2019s much more of a partner in terms of focusing on the economy and that means resource development,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sullivan cited the state\u2019s recent North Slope oil and gas lease sale, which drew a very large number of bids totaling $36 million despite low oil prices, as a sign of industry\u2019s economic optimism.<\/p>\n

When it comes to filling Trump\u2019s cabinet, the most immediate task when Congress resumes, Sullivan said Senate Democrats will likely be faced with a bit of turnabout.<\/p>\n

Retiring Nevada Democrat Sen. Harry Reid pushed new parliamentary rules as the Majority Leader through the Senate in 2013 that \u201cnuked\u201d the filibuster for most appointment confirmations, meaning presidential appointees need only 51 votes instead of the former 60.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way a guy like Attorney General (Scott) Pruitt of Oklahoma would be able to get confirmed with 60 of us senators right now,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n

Pruitt, an oil development advocate, is Trump\u2019s pick for Environmental Protection Agency administrator and there will be 52 Republicans in the next Senate.<\/p>\n

Sullivan has met \u201ca few\u201d of Trump\u2019s nominees, but said the vetting process will begin in earnest when Congress resumes Jan. 3.<\/p>\n

A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sullivan said the state\u2019s congressional delegation as a whole has made significant progress in getting the key players at every level in Washington, D.C., to recognize Alaska\u2019s strategic importance to national defense.<\/p>\n

With Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks preparing for the long-anticipated arrival of two squadrons of F-35 fighters adding to the F-22s already at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska has become \u201cthe hub of air combat power for the Asia-Pacific,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the F-35s we\u2019re going to have over 100 fifth-generation fighters in Alaska. There\u2019s no place in the world that\u2019s got that,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n

Further, the nation\u2019s missile defense system is centered at Fort Greely in Delta and rapid-response combat troops can be deployed anywhere in the world within hours, Sullivan noted.<\/p>\n

The Defense spending bill passed earlier this year calls for adding 16,000 troops, a big positive for Sullivan as well, to stem the 40,000-troop drawdown that has occurred during the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

He calls increasing the military presence in Alaska \u201ca sweet spot issue\u201d because it benefits both the state and the country as a whole.<\/p>\n

Finally, Sullivan said he would like to see the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals \u2014 which is based in San Francisco and hears federal cases pertaining to Alaska \u2014 split.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the 9th Circuit is simply too big, he contends.<\/p>\n

The court with 29 judgeships hears federal appeals from 15 District Courts in nine Western states and that unavoidably leads to an unbearable workload for the judges and in-turn the slowest appeals court in country, said Sullivan, who also worked as a law clerk on the 9th Circuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the opinions are written by the 23-year-old law clerk who just got out of law school, which is a travesty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Splitting the 9th Circuit would speed rulings and could, in his opinion, improve outcomes for Alaska cases pertaining to resource development issues if they were no longer heard by often-liberal judges from California.<\/p>\n

A cohort of Arizona Republicans called for the state to be pulled from the 9th Circuit earlier this year for largely the same reasons.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Elwood Brehmer is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce and can be reached at elwood.brehmer@alaskajournal.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Like all members of Congress, Sen. Dan Sullivan has a long list of to-dos. Tops on that list right now is an issue he\u2019s outwardly excited about tackling nearly as soon as the new Congress gavels in Jan. 3. \u201cThe economy, the economy, the economy,\u201d he said. A strident conservative, Sullivan noted in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"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":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9013"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}