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Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
Fix banking and insurance regulations harming state economies? Nah.
Deal with the immigration trainwreck, including work authorization? Nope.
Pass an on-time budget? No way.
Ensure that U.S. Sen. John Fetterman can wear shorts and hoodies in the Senate? Absolutely critical.
It’s the bad punchline to the joke that is Washington.
States have been individually expanding legal access to marijuana over the past 20 years. It is fully legal in nearly half the country, and either decriminalized or medically available in the other half. Only four states still have an outright prohibition.
For nearly a decade, bills have been presented in Congress with bipartisan support that would reduce federal interference in intra-state issues. Several would enable our financial system — banks and insurers — to provide services to these businesses. So far, nothing has passed.
Some have celebrated it appears that maybe Congress might sorta move a bill forward on the issue. I’d say it is literally the least they could do.
Meanwhile, time and again politicians have issued press releases about dealing with an agreed-upon problem with our immigration system. Specifically, work authorization for people who are here in order to allow them to generate economic activity — which they want to do — instead of taking millions in taxpayer handouts.
Nothing has happened. It has been a problem for years.
I wrote months ago that Maine should consider forcing the issue. New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently floated the same idea.
This isn’t particularly partisan. It should be the least we could expect from Congress.
Finally, the federal budget drama is foolish on all sides. The subset of House Republicans creating the most chaos seem more focused on television time than doing their jobs. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is rudderless, having lost control of the ship of state.
President Joe Biden’s decades of congressional experience were supposed to equip him to lead through these situations. It hasn’t.
Passing a budget should be the least we expect.
The Senate — Republicans and Democrats alike — are the closest thing we have to functional adults on the budget issue. Yet they still have not been able to lead us forward.
But when Fetterman wanted to wear shorts and hoodies? Our elected officials sprang into action to make it so. When they were soundly ridiculed they jumped again, writing a formal dress code into the rules.
It is telling that with all of these major issues facing our nation, the only one that political leaders seem able to deal with is a dress code. Everything else languishes.
The common problem with all these situations is a centralized behemoth known as the federal government. The remedy is removing them from the equation.
When it comes to cannabis, Washington should let states legalize things on their own terms and keep their paws off banks, insurance companies, and the like. If it is legal in Maine, it is legal for all purposes, period.
Gov. Hochul of New York is on the right track standing up to the Biden Administration for their trainwreck of immigration enforcement. And for all the nice sounding press releases, Congress is committing regulatory malpractice by failing to pass decent laws. If someone is legally inside a state’s borders, let the state decide if they can go to work.
When it comes to the federal shutdown, we should not be faced with stories outlining a litany of scary “what ifs.” The less the federal government has to do — particularly when those things could be done by state officials — the fewer consequences from a shutdown. I have confidence that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, for example, can effectively manage environmental permitting.
There was a time when the GOP stood for smaller, more local government. It is a value that should be re-emphasized and, reading the news today, will probably resonate. Get Washington out of the way, re-empower our states, and let’s deal with something more substantial than the Senate dress code.
