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A little over a month ago, I stood before this body to object to the massive public lands package that it was poised to pass. This bill – 680 pages long – was released at 10am that morning. My staff and I had not seen it beforehand, and were given no time to read it. This is, of course, bad process. This is not the way legislation should be written and debated; and it is not the way that it should be passed. But in addition to the bad process, I objected because I suspected that it was also bad policy – bad policy that would disproportionally and negatively affect the state of Utah.

WASHINGTON – Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act Wednesday, a bill that would remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards. “Immigrants should not be penalized due to their country of origin,” Sen. Lee said. “Treating people fairly and equally is part of our founding creed and the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act reflects that belief. Immigration is often a contentious issue, but we should not delay progress in areas where there is bipartisan consensus just because we have differences in a other areas."

WASHINGTON – The United States Senate agreed unanimously to rename the North Ogden Department of Veteran’s Affairs Outstation the Major Brent Taylor Vet Center Outstation Tuesday. Major Brent Taylor was the Mayor of North Ogden when he made the ultimate sacrifice on November 3, 2018 while deployed in Afghanistan. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) has introduced companion legislation in the House. “In every aspect of his life, Major Taylor was a shining example of patriotism, sacrifice, and service,” Sen. Lee said on the floor of the United Senate while securing unanimous consent for the resolution’s passage. “It is only right that we honor his extraordinary life. And to that end, it would only be a fitting tribute to rename the Ogden veterans’ center as the ‘Major Brent Taylor Vet Center Outstation.’ ”

Conservatives often face a difficult problem that progressives do not when attempting to reform public policy problems at the federal level. For progressives, everything is a national issue that should be solved by the federal government. For conservatives, however, the United States Constitution gave only some enumerated powers to the federal government and intended the rest of governmental authority to be left to the states.