Senator Says ‘President’s Plan Wastes Billions of Dollars and Years of Valuable Time’

WASHINGTON – Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called President Obama’s plan for returning the U.S. to space thoroughly misguided, saying it will waste years of time, billions of dollars and cost thousands of jobs in Utah and elsewhere across the nation.

“This is getting silly. The President’s plan wastes billions of dollars and years of valuable time,” said Hatch. “I would say the administration’s plan is laughable, but I can’t find much humor in it when the consequences to space exploration and American workers during tough economic times are so dire.” Read the rest of this entry »

Utah Senator Calls Decision Critical to Those Who Want to Keep Government Hands Off the Internet

SALT LAKE CITY – U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) hailed today’s unanimous Appeals Court decision that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had stepped beyond its authority by regulating the Internet with so-called “net neutrality” rules. Hatch serves as Chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force.

“Today’s court decision is critical to those who’ve been fighting to keep the ever-expanding hand of government off the Internet.  It’s clear that the FCC overstepped its authority with an aggressive agenda of more and more regulation at the expense of the American people.  This is also good news for the future prosperity of the Internet, because there is now an actual incentive to expand capacity, which benefits consumers and our economy alike.”

In October 2009, Hatch and Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) slammed the FCC in an opinion piece that ran in the Wall Street Journal.  The Senators wrote:

“Yet despite an overwhelming record of innovation, and customer satisfaction, Washington wants to replace the judgment of consumers with that of politicians and bureaucrats. Net neutrality may sound like fairness but it is actually the opposite. Bandwidth is finite—like the finite number of lanes on a highway—and network providers must innovate in order to accommodate the burgeoning traffic. As they invest billions of private dollars in new and improved networks, they should rightly expect to set prices and manage those networks as they see fit. If the FCC takes control of the Internet, we’ll have the inevitable result of all poorly designed regulations: business decisions prejudiced by politicians and political decisions prejudiced by corporations. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the most competitive, efficient and consumer-driven industry in the global economy.”

To read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece in its entirety, clink here.

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MEMORANDUM

TO: Reporters and Editors

FROM: Antonia Ferrier for Senator Hatch

DATE: Wednesday, March 24, 2010

RE: Orchestrated White House Attacks Against State AG Challenges to Unconstitutional Individual Mandate

The White House and its Washington allies are orchestrating a series of attacks against those Attorneys General across the country who are taking action against the unconstitutional “individual mandate” in the highly-unpopular health care bill. They have also started attacking Sen. Hatch’s opposition to the unconstitutional individual mandate by looking back at legislation that was introduced back in the 1990s as an alternative to HillaryCare.

First off, Senator Hatch applauds the efforts of those Attorneys General across the country to fight the unconstitutional individual mandate.  He has been responsible by examining the constitutionality of a key component of this highly-unpopular and deeply-flawed health care bill.  The question is why hasn’t the Administration? It’s a little hard to believe the Administration on this, when they’ve hardly been consistent.  In fact, if memory serves, then-candidate Obama was against the individual mandate – even chastising then-Senator Clinton for her support of it. Read the rest of this entry »