When I talk to individuals throughout the district, many have heard about the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to use 40-plus-year-old laws to close coal power plants, regulate puddles of water and restrict how children can help on family farms. This week, I am focusing on how another 40-year-old law, the Endangered Species Act, is increasingly used to erode private property rights, restrict how farmers use their land and water, and could destroy Missouri’s timber industry. Most everyone agrees there is value in preventing species from extinction. The problem with the Endangered Species Act is that it does not fulfill its mission of recovering species. Since the law was enacted, more than 1,500 U.S. domestic species and sub-species have been listed
- Oct 03,
Over the last two weeks I have visited dozens of farms and ranches and listened to hundreds of farmers on my second annual Eighth Congressional District Farm Tour. Agriculture in South-Central and Southeast Missouri is incredibly diverse. If fact, we grow everything except citrus and sugar. While the crops we grow and the livestock we raise are diverse, every farmer I talked to in the last two weeks brought up the same topic: the EPA war on rural America. No other federal agency pushes more intrusive and ineffective regulations on farmers than the Environmental Protection Agency. On the Farm Tour, the EPA’s proposed “Waters of the United States” plan was discussed numerous times. Back in April, the EPA announced it would
Aug 29,