As the Senate considers H.R. 6147, the Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and Government Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2019, NTU urges all Senators to support initiatives that reduce expenditures, eliminate waste, increase efficiency, reduce regulatory burdens, and otherwise uphold free market principles.
To that end, NTU urges all Senators to vote “YES” on the following amendments:
Amd. 3402, Cruz (R-TX): This critical amendment would prohibit the District of Columbia from imposing an individual mandate for health insurance coverage. The individual mandate, or “shared responsibility payment,” would compel residents to purchase government-approved health insurance or face a tax penalty, regardless of need or financial capacity. This kind of coercive policy is a threat to both economic and individual liberty.
Repealing the individual mandate was a major victory for taxpayers in 2017, one that residents of the District of Columbia should get to share. **This amendment will be significantly weighted.**
Amd. 3522, Lee (R-UT)-Booker (D-NJ): This bipartisan amendment would prohibit the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from enforcing unreasonable “standards of identity” in food labelling. New restrictive standards would consider many common compound, alternative products as adulterated. Other labeling requirements, such as listing ingredients, more than sufficiently guard against potential consumer confusion that could actually be compounded by more complicated restrictions. More often than not, this type of heavy-handed regulatory action has more to do with protecting powerful industries from competitors than it does with addressing any real food safety issue for consumers.
Roll call votes on these amendment to H.R. 6147 will be included in our annual Rating of Congress and a “YES” vote will be considered the pro-taxpayer position.