Policy Corner

OPM Policy/Career Rule is Published with AFP Support

AFP senior fellow Kurt Couchman’s statement for a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on potential shutdown impacts.

Overstating the benefits of tax increases may worsen the fiscal outlook by encouraging lawmakers to avoid the necessary structural reforms that will put the budget on a sustainable path. The debate over tax policy must be grounded in reality.

By passing legislation that ensures legislatures have the ability to approve or disapprove of major rules prior to them going into effect, these legislatures will also be affording the regulated community the confidence that the rule at issue will not easily be changed absent a future act of the legislature—which is a slower process that those subject to regulations would be more able to track and adapt to without the need of costly legal experts.

On January 29th, Graham Owens testified in front of the Missouri Special Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs on HB 2559, a bill to require the general assembly to approve proposed administrative rules.

On January 28, a federal district court struck down Mississippi’s long-standing moratorium on the establishment of certain new health care facilities, calling the forty-year application of the moratorium “irrational.”

The regulatory developments of 2025 underscore how overregulation and unchecked agency authority tend to raise costs, slow growth, and limit opportunity, while strong procedural guardrails and regulatory reforms can deliver better outcomes. As regulatory debates continue through 2026, policymakers and advocates should focus on reforms that promote accountability, streamline permitting, expand competition, lower costs, and enable innovation.

Members of Congress need an annual schedule with a regular cadence. Shared expectations support policy development, coalition building, and healthy competition on a wide range of priorities.

This series aims to illustrate how Congress can become the empowered, yet bounded, legislature that America needs.

As a part of efforts by Georgia leaders to continue improving economic opportunity and affordability, H.B. 987 could help millions of Georgia workers and their families by removing obstacles that have given self-employed workers disadvantages in pursuing affordable benefits.