By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas First District Congressman Tracey Mann continues to be concerned by the Biden Administration's attempt to expand government through executive orders.
"The Founding Fathers never intended for the President, or the executive branch to bypass Congress with overreaching executive orders and basically governing through executive orders, rulemaking, bureaucracies, those kinds of things," Mann said. "In the first week of the Biden administration, there were more executive orders than in the last ten Presidents combined, their first week. My first piece of legislation was pushing back on these executive orders, limiting them, requiring some notification periods, trying to rein that in. Regardless of party, that's a big problem."
The size of government is also an ongoing concern for Mann.
"The last 18 months, there's no doubt of the fact that the federal government has dramatically grown," Mann said. "It is more intrusive in Kansans lives and in lives of those in the Big First. I am concerned about where that road leads us."
As a member of the minority party in the lower house of a Congress that the administration is not consulting on many issues anyway, how does Mann push back against the tide?
"We are in a battle for hearts and minds that then results in people's votes in Washington D.C.," Mann said. "We are strongly engaged in that battle. How do we win that battle? One is by having conversations both publicly and privately with a lot of members. Two, doing good work at the committee level is essential to good representation in Congress. Three, writing and submitting good legislation that has merits regardless of the aisle that somebody's on as they are looking at it. Four, a lot of things that have been put into effect from the executive branch is unconstitutional. We've got to be pushing back and fighting about that in court. Five, the rulemaking process, a lot of these things, the details of them, like the vaccine mandate, come out in the rulemaking process. Providing oversight and pushback at that step in the process is something that we're doing a lot, as well and then also, it's just being loud and outspoken about the things the Big First needs and wants."
The full interview with Congressman Mann is below.