Issues

From powering our homes, to driving our cars, to communicating with family and friends, energy is a major component of nearly every product we buy and service we use. Unfortunately, for too long government has championed anti-energy policies through a crushing combination of stifling regulations and excessive taxes that kill jobs, undermine our energy security and siphon money out of consumers’ pockets

CASE is fighting back against reckless regulations, such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which shutters power plants while producing scant benefit for our environment. We oppose government handouts and subsidies to expensive and unproven “green” technologies that cost taxpayers billions, and support expanding areas for safe exploration and extraction of our energy assets. We further reject the never-ending calls for even higher taxes on the energy Americans rely on. CASE champions energy freedom that allows America’s energy producers to provide the power we need, safely, abundantly, leading to lower costs for industry and America’s energy consumer.

Technology has led America’s economy to surge in directions we couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago.  The pace will only accelerate as innovations such as drones, driverless cars, artificial intelligence and the near instantaneous access to information settle in as part of our daily lives.  Technology, and the powerful devices we use to access it, represent unprecedented opportunities for how Americans will interact, collaborate, communicate, invest, work, relax, travel and even receive medical care.

Yet with its breathtaking promise, current and upcoming trends in high tech remain largely unchartered waters.  As technological ingenuity expands further, it is paramount that government allow the marketplace to innovate without needless regulations or playing favorites to existing industries or emerging technologies.  CASE is further committed to ensuring that the technology boom does not leave more Americans vulnerable to attacks on our safety, security, privacy or property.  By balancing the freedom to innovate with consumer safeguards, technology will have near limitless potential to both drive our economy and create a better way of life for all.

America has long been the world’s bread basket. Our more than 3.2 million farmers and ranchers, as well as nearly a million more U.S. workers in the agriculture sector, work tirelessly to provide the blessings that feed our nation and much of the world.

Yet almost no sector in our economy is as prone to subsidies, restrictions, and protectionist manipulation in global markets by foreign competitors as is agriculture. CASE has joined the fight as a staunch opponent against protectionism and deliberate distortions in the global marketplace of agricultural products and commodities, which serve only to hurt consumers through limited choice and higher prices. Regulation to ensure a secure and safe food supply is both a critical and legitimate role for government, but interfering in the marketplace to achieve a national advantage is not. CASE is further committed to ensuring that growers and producers compete in a manner that is open, fair and transparent, providing consumers as much information and choice as possible.

Whether shopping at a traditional store or purchasing online, retail transactions are the lifeblood of the consumer economy.  The retail marketplace is also a complex one, with  consumers’ approach to purchasing decisions as varied as the products themselves.  The market for baby food (as one example), is a far cry from the market for truck tires, makeup or furniture, and the rules governing our retail economy must be both rational and equally fitting to the retail sector to which they apply.

As a champion for free markets, CASE is a vocal opponent of government at any level meddling in how retailers run their business.  We oppose laws and regulations that are not critical to basic consumer protections, such as truth in advertising, fair dealing or the secure handling of consumers’ personal and financial information.  We reject government interference of retail through the imposition of wage and benefit requirements, as well as the dizzying number of workplace rules that serve only to raise costs, eliminate choice and hurt consumers.  CASE is firmly committed to supporting the common-sense rules which protect consumers’ retail transactions, and protecting consumers further by leading the charge against the mountain of government rules on retailers which put a chokehold on the marketplace.

Government has a place in overseeing the marketplace through limited and reasonable regulations that provide basic consumer protections. But in recent decades government regulations have exploded, strangling our economy and costing consumers thousands of dollars each year in compliance costs. The federal register topped 80,000 pages in 2016, with an estimated regulatory burden on our economy of $1.8 trillion. CASE is committed to pushing back against this massive regulatory state and uprooting the most harmful and unnecessary regulations that hurt consumers, kill jobs, and undermine our economy.

Government encroachment into Americans’ healthcare has been nothing short of a disaster, resulting in skyrocketing premiums, higher treatment costs, fewer options, and disincentives for doctors to provide care. CASE believes in both the sanctity of the doctor/patient relationship, and a healthcare market which allows consumers to make informed choices about how best to tend to their medical needs. Obamacare failed with its top-down and one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare. Real healthcare reform involves removing barriers that prevent insurance providers from offering the widest choice of options to the greatest number of consumers. When Americans’ lives and well-being are at stake, consumers should be empowered to choose the healthcare services and providers that work best for them, not what government bureaucrats dictate.

America’s national debt will soon zoom past a staggering $20 trillion, double the amount of debt our nation owed a mere eight years ago. Meanwhile government is collecting record tax revenues on workers and industry, filling the Treasury so fast it’s in peril of bursting at the seams. CASE believes this policy of record borrowing, taxing and spending is both reckless and immoral, choking economic investment and growth that negatively impacts the financial future of every American. Unsustainable debt and taxes are leading our nation to economic ruin, and future generations will be crippled by inheriting mountainous debt. CASE strongly opposes tax increases on America’s consumers and workers, and will vigorously promote budget plans that reign in government spending and provide Americans with lasting tax relief.

With actual and threatened lawsuits against U.S. industry costing consumers billions of dollars a year, CASE supports legal reforms that discourage excessive damage awards and settlements that saddle or economy and hurt U.S. competitiveness, while bringing compensation awards more in-line with actual damages suffered. We will continue to push for reforms which prevent plaintiff attorneys from bundling and re-selling clients for class-action lawsuits.  Common sense legal reforms that protect actual victims while discouraging attorneys from seeking massive paydays on the backs of the public will help lower the $240 billion cost of America’s court system for civil suits. It will further reduce the costs consumers pay for goods and services and allow enterprise to continue to innovate and put more products on the market without fear of being sued out of business.

America’s ability to create and innovate is the envy of the world. From the creative arts, to new technologies and patents, to software and digital engineering, American ingenuity continues to set the standard across the globe, while supporting 45 million jobs domestically. America’s intellectual property and creative assets still face a constant threat from piracy and misappropriation that poses a serious cost to our economy and robs consumers through higher costs and diminished incentives to inventors, engineers and artists to reap the benefits of their efforts. CASE is a vigilant defender of the marketplace of innovation and creativity, rights affirmed in the United States Constitution’s Article 1, Section 8. We stand firmly in favor of laws and regulations which vigorously protect intellectual property in all its forms. Consumers also need protection from counterfeiters and con artists who steal the works of others and exploit illegitimate channels of distribution. Theft, in any form, harms all of us, and consumers have a strong voice in CASE to protect the marketplace of ideas.

The current regulatory scheme governing banking laws and investment instruments was the wrong response to the financial crisis of 2008, creating a confounding maze that few understand and even fewer can navigate. Hundreds of provisions of the 2010 massive banking overhaul, Dodd-Frank are little understood to this day and have yet to be fully interpreted. The disruption of America’s financial institutions has become clear, with government regulators receiving unprecedented powers and the creation of an uneven playing field among lenders. An unnecessary credit squeeze on America’s consumers and businesses highlights the case where government is “crowding the field,” resulting in a weaker and slower-growing economy.

CASE believes it’s time to fix the “glitch,” by keeping firm but sensible regulations on banks in place while getting government out of the banking business. It’s time to ensure a level playing field and keep government agencies within their delegated powers of oversight and consumer safety, while eliminating undo restrictions on banks that have achieved nothing other than to put a shark infested moat between consumers and access to credit. A market economy that rewards risk and investment requires clear and firm banking rules, not an army of government regulators squeezing the credit market with their arbitrary interventionist impulses.

Free and fair trade is both the cornerstone and the mantra of a pro-consumer market economy. America is by far the world’s largest economy, over $7 trillion in total GDP larger than its closest rival. Free trade and a larger global economy benefit consumers with greater competition that leads to lower prices, more innovation and greater economic opportunity. But U.S. trade with other nations must actually be free and fair bilaterally – devoid of market and currency manipulation, subsidies and protectionist policies on the part of our trade partners. CASE advocates the negotiation and affirmation of trade deals that honor a just and level playing field, where America opens access to our marketplace for nations who do likewise with us in good faith. Any counterfeit advantage employed by a potential trade partner must be eliminated to further extend access to America’s markets and consumers.

America from its very origins was founded upon the pillar of individual property rights, with specific provisions in our Constitution against “takings” by eminent domain as well as unfair tax schemes which dilute the value of property. With the continued growth of government and the regulatory state, the rights of property owners has never faced a bigger threat. CASE is fully engaged in the fight to defend property from encroaching government control, and stands ready to vigorously defend land owners from those who seek to coerce or restrict them in the use and enjoyment of their land. Government schemes that target land for burdensome regulatory control or takings is entirely inconsistent with the ideals and benefits of the free market and the interests of America’s consumers.

There is a crisis in American higher education, with spiraling tuition costs and total student loan debt held by Americans surpassing $1.6 trillion. Many students encouraged to go to college to achieve their dreams are graduating with degrees that may have high academic value, but are of little value in a competitive global economy. Worsening this problem are federal bureaucrats and politicians picking winners and losers among institutions of higher education, disfavoring and leveling regulatory attacks against career-oriented and for-profit colleges who don’t follow the blueprint of the liberal education establishment. CASE supports and fights for an even playing field in higher education, heightened review of the costs of private and state institutions, and a student loan system that helps students achieve a quality education that will open opportunity for graduates while also creating the millions of skilled workers our economy urgently needs to adapt and grow.

America’s workers should have the fundamental right to decide whether to join a labor union, and the ability to earn an income should not be controlled by politicians and the union bosses who fund them. CASE will fight to protect and expand Right to Work laws beyond the 26 states that currently have them. The simple principle of giving workers and employers the freedom to contract together in the labor market is a vital component to competitiveness that leads to economic growth and greater prosperity for our nation.

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