For thousands of years, mankind has used fire as a means of keeping warm and wood from the world’s forests have served as the fuel for this most basic of life sustaining forces.  Today, during one of the harshest winters in recent memory, many Americans have returned to this basic heating source to keep themselves and their families warm within the confines of their homes.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that our very own federal government has decided to unfairly regulate the burning of wood by individuals and businesses in our country. After my initial shock wore off, I wrote an urgent letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy expressing my concerns with the New Source Performance Standards for residential wood burning heaters. You see, not only would these new regulations impact households across the country, they would send small manufacturers out of business due to the increased costs to produce wood stoves that many consumers would no longer be able to afford.

This harebrained idea coming from the EPA is, in my mind, just another example of a one-size-fits-all mold from the Administration that simply does not work.

So, let’s take a close look at the extent to which the federal government is seeking to regulate nearly every aspect of our lives, and in the process, we can see that these regulations are diminishing the individual liberties guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution.

The estimated cost of federal regulations in the United States is $1.806 trillion annually, a figure that amounts to 11.6 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and in 2013 alone, federal regulators imposed an additional $112 billion in indirect costs to the economy. In addition, the paperwork burden to comply with government regulations rose to 10.38 billion hours, an increase of 157.9 million hours from 2012.

Still, this problem is even worse than many can possibly imagine. At the end of 2013, the Obama Administration had over 4,000 new regulations in the pipeline, with more than 200 of them considered to be “economically significant” which means they would have an accumulated cost of over $100 million across the country to our citizens. In fact, the Code of Federal Regulations now stands at 174,545 pages, compared to 22,877 pages in 1960 with the regulatory cost per household totaling $14,678, or 23.2 percent of the national average family income.

And believe me, people in the 3^rd Congressional District and across the nation have noticed. A survey conducted last December by the Center for Regulatory Solutions found that 70 percent of Americans believe that regulations “mostly hurt” the American economy and 67 percent believe they mostly hurt America’s competitiveness. Moreover, 66 percent of Americans said regulations hurt entrepreneurs and small businesses, while 66 percent also said that they hurt American workers. Another 72 percent of Americans believe that regulations are created in a “closed, secretive process,” and 68 percent of Americans believe that regulations are created by “out of touch people.”

I, along with my House Republican colleagues, have sponsored numerous pieces of legislation designed to reduce government regulations, most recently aimed at the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies. But the EPA has been a longtime regulatory albatross around the neck of the economy, and this latest scheme regarding the burning of wood is rightfully gaining national attention. I believe that your voice, along with mine and those of my colleagues, will stop this government intrusion in its tracks. I am committed to working on this issue because that’s what many of you have rightfully demanded.

CONTACT US: As always, for those of you with Internet access, I encourage you to visit my official website. For those without access to the Internet, I encourage you to call my offices in Jefferson City (573-635-7232) Washington, Mo. (636-239-2276), or Wentzville (636-327-7055) with your questions and concerns. If you want even greater access to what I am working on, please visit my YouTube site, Facebook page, and keep up-to-date with Twitter.