Young rails against federal over regulation

WASILLA — In the middle of his latest re-election fight, U.S. Rep. Don Young stopped by a meeting of local businessmen Tuesday to say why he wants to be returned to Washington, D.C.

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman covered a joint meeting of the Greater Palmer and Greater Wasilla chambers of commerce because Rep. Young said his schedule did not allow time for a face-to-face meeting with the newspaper’s editorial board.

“I am the spokesman for you back in Congress,” Young said. “When you decide that I can’t do the job, then you’ll get rid of me—as it should be.”

Barack Obama is the eighth president to occupy the White House since he was elected, Young said, and he has served with more than 1,600 congressmen.

He told the chambers he is thinking about the Valley and that he understands the area has to get ready for the Knik Arm Bridge.

“That bridge will be built,” he said. “This is the fastest growing area in the state of Alaska.”

But, he told those assembled, in their work building up their own area they shouldn’t forget Fairbanks or Southeast.

“Try to help other areas of the state as you can,” he said. “Because we’re all in this together.”

He said he will continue to seek earmarks for Alaska because Congress was given the power of the purse and it is therefore a Congressman’s job to decide how federal tax dollars are spent.

But he used the bulk of his time discussing overregulation. He said that the various agencies of the federal government have put in place hundreds of thousands of regulations that Congress never approved.

“We have allowed the executive branch to take over our role,” he said. “That’s got to stop if you want to live in a democracy.”

To a question about Cook Inlet beluga whales, Young said he thought the state was going to come out OK in the end when the environmental regulators decided what to do.

But, he said, it’s problematic that a federal bureaucrat can, in this instance, decide that the declining belugas in Cook Inlet were a distinct species and therefore in need of protection even though beluga whales are plentiful elsewhere.

“There’s no difference between that beluga whale and one in Kotzebue,” Young said, before later adding, “the polar bear is not endangered. It never was endangered.”

He also said that global warming is not a man-made phenomenon, that what warming there is comes as a result of natural processes.

Asked what hope Alaska has for re-energizing its oil development, Young answered that first there needs to be a change at the top.

“Truthfully, we’ve got to get rid of Obama in 2012,” he said, adding that the president wants to turn America into a third-rate country and blame man for global warming.

“It isn’t all our fault,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.