Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the fundamental liberties of all Americans and advocating for America's founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early in life while watching his father, Rex E. Lee, serve as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique and up-close understanding of government.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Protecting the American people from foreign threats is a fundamental function of the federal government. In crafting the U.S. Constitution, our Founders understood the immense power and control vested in the ability to raise and command an Army and Navy as well as to declare war. While the President serves as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Congress is the only branch with the power to declare war and raise a military through the power of the purse. This authority was given to Congress because it is the branch held most accountable by the people.
Congress and the President also share the responsibility of engaging with foreign nations. Congress is explicitly charged with the power to regulate foreign commerce, and the Senate’s power to ratify treaties and offer advice and consent on ambassador nominations serves as a check on the President’s diplomatic power.
Over the years, the checks and balances and appropriate division of this power has weakened, resulting in a concentration of both defense and foreign relations powers in the executive branch. Therefore, one of Senator Lee’s missions is to reassert and reinvigorate the constitutional role of Congress in shaping U.S. military and foreign policy. He continues to lead major legislation on war powers, military spending, and restraining international institutions. He believes very strongly that actions that would put American blood and treasure on the line must be debated and discussed where the risks and benefits can be carefully weighed and the American people can influence such decisions through their elected leaders. The U.S. Congress is the only body that meets both parameters.
Another major component of protecting our national security and sovereignty is securing our borders. We must know who is entering and exiting our country to protect Americans domestically and ensure that we enforce our immigration laws so as not to incentivize those who want to enter the United States to do so illegally.
While the Framers understood the importance of national security, they also understood that protecting civil liberties by limiting the government’s power to search and spy on its citizens was an essential protection against tyranny. As James Madison said when framing a government where men govern men “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.” Senator Lee believes the federal government must follow warrant requirements enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to protect Americans against unauthorized government surveillance and preserve the civil liberties granted by our Constitution.
When Utah first entered the Union, a ratified agreement called the Utah Enabling Act stipulated that “public lands lying within said State… shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union.” Unfortunately, the federal government has not held up its end of the bargain and has retained vast amounts of Utah acreage limiting Utahns' ability to maintain, conserve, recreate, and responsibly produce on the lands within their own state.
Senator Lee believes much of this land should be transferred to the state as promised so that Utah’s natural resources can be better managed to conserve the land, provide for the state’s constituents, and serve its multi-use purposes. Utah has a great track record of responsibly managing public lands and caring for its environment, while ensuring economic prosperity for its communities, families, and industries dependent on access to the land, like agriculture, energy, and outdoor recreation.
As Utah’s population grows, access to the land will become even more urgent and necessary. Some will need to accommodate affordable housing, roads to ease congestion, schools, etc; other acreage that contains critical minerals and energy sources will need to be responsibly and safely tapped; and finally, others will need to be preserved for fishing, hunting, climbing, and other outdoor sports that bring families together and are simply a way of life in the west.
Additionally, Senator Lee believes the federal government should not pick winners and losers in the energy sector or agriculture sector and that the free market and the demands of the public will result in the most efficient use of funds, reliable supply of energy to fuel the country and food to feed our population, and innovative solutions to keep our environment clean and food supply safe. But again, safe, responsible, and reliable access to the land is necessary to accomplish this.
While the Constitution charges Congress with regulating interstate commerce, Senator Lee believes that authority should be used to ensure goods and services can be properly sold and traded amongst the 50 states and the rest of the world. He does not think it gives the federal government blanket authority to micromanage the country’s economy.
Congress should allow American businesses and families to thrive without the burdensome hand of government getting in the way. Workers succeed when businesses have access to the capital they need, and capital becomes more readily available when government is not overregulating or spending beyond its means.
Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have proven they have an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit to better not only their own lives but the lives of their neighbors, local communities, and the world at large. Senator Lee believes Americans, not government, have built businesses, employed workers, supported families, and provided the ideas to improve the lives of each generation.
The federal government can appropriately help support the continuation of these successes by removing unnecessary regulations, increasing access to foreign markets through free and fair trade agreements, simplifying our tax code and making it more competitive, protecting the integrity of the dollar, and protecting American workers by ensuring our legal immigration system supplements our workforce only where there is a gap.
Jobs also depend on free markets, and free markets require vigilance to protect them from anticompetitive monopolies. Senator Lee, through his leadership on the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, works to ensure that our antitrust enforcers vigorously enforce U.S. law to protect consumers and free markets.
While the Constitution charges Congress with regulating interstate commerce, Senator Lee believes that authority should be used to ensure goods and services can be properly sold and traded amongst the 50 states and the rest of the world. He does not think it gives the federal government blanket authority to micromanage the country’s economy.
Congress should allow American businesses and families to thrive without the burdensome hand of government getting in the way. Workers succeed when businesses have access to the capital they need, and capital becomes more readily available when government is not overregulating or spending beyond its means.
Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have proven they have an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit to better not only their own lives but the lives of their neighbors, local communities, and the world at large. Senator Lee believes Americans, not government, have built businesses, employed workers, supported families, and provided the ideas to improve the lives of each generation.
The federal government can appropriately help support the continuation of these successes by removing unnecessary regulations, increasing access to foreign markets through free and fair trade agreements, simplifying our tax code and making it more competitive, protecting the integrity of the dollar, and protecting American workers by ensuring our legal immigration system supplements our workforce only where there is a gap.
Jobs also depend on free markets, and free markets require vigilance to protect them from anticompetitive monopolies. Senator Lee, through his leadership on the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, works to ensure that our antitrust enforcers vigorously enforce U.S. law to protect consumers and free markets.
The family is the most basic and essential building block of American society, and strong families are the best predictor of financial, educational, and emotional success in life. Accordingly, Senator Lee consistently pursues policies that strengthen family ties and works to undo government interventions that penalize or weaken the family.
Since every human life holds innate and profound dignity and worth from conception, it is essential that the federal government respect each human life. Every individual deserves respect and protection to freely exercise and live out their religious and moral beliefs without fear of oppression or persecution as guaranteed by the First Amendment to our Constitution.
The importance of the family and the social capital that comes from active, local communities motivates much of Senator Lee’s work – everything from tax policy to welfare policy to criminal justice reform. He believes America must renew civil society and the federal government should not crowd-out civil society’s role or Americans' participation in associational life and the institutions that secure it.
For instance, Senator Lee believes the tax code should not penalize marriage, our entitlement system should not penalize parents, and our criminal code should provide flexibility to judges in sentencing non-violent offenders. Ensuring that the federal government places married couples and parents on a level-playing field as other Americans and provides those that have been convicted of non-violent crimes the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and return to their families and communities are important reforms that Senator Lee has made a focus of his work.
Access to affordable, high-quality healthcare is a critical component of a productive and vibrant society. Unfortunately, due to government intrusion, many Americans cannot afford the care and treatment they need.
Each of our 50 states has different populations with different health-care needs, so Senator Lee believes there is no reason all Americans should be forced to purchase the same “essential health benefits” package while shopping for health insurance. Good health-care policy is flexible and customizable, since what is essential to one family or individual may not be essential to another.
While Senator Lee opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, he believes the problems of federal intervention in the health-care sector started decades earlier. Exempting employer-provided health insurance from taxation was one of the first issues that inappropriately incentivized the employer-sponsored model over the individual consumer model. For many Americans, this has resulted in fewer insurance choices and has tied them to their jobs.
While immediately ending the tax deduction for healthcare provided through an employer would be unsettling for many Americans, Senator Lee believes its reform must be a topic for debate. But possibly the most important health-care reform needed is a liberalization of health savings accounts. Freeing these accounts from federal government restrictions could allow Americans to save more for their health-care needs, allow them to transfer from jobs without losing their insurance, and equip them to be more active and engaged consumers. With a more informed consumer base, its influence over the market could truly turn things around, improving quality, cost, and accessibility.
Additionally, Senator Lee believes Congress must reform the Food and Drug Administration to make medical devices and drugs (and their generics) available sooner and at a lower cost. Medicaid must also be addressed to ensure it is targeted for the truly vulnerable who are unable to provide for themselves, such as children, pregnant women, and the disabled; and reforms must be made to the Department of Health and Human Services so that all life, including the lives of the unborn and the elderly, is always protected.
Human capital – the knowledge, skills, and abilities of every person – is one of our nation’s greatest resources. Because an education is essential for many to pursue the American dream, Senator Lee believes reforms are needed to empower students and their families with options that best meet their unique needs.
Children’s first teachers are their parents, and parents must carry the primary responsibility to oversee and direct their children’s education. Therefore, it’s important that families have choices – whether that be home schooling, public school, charter school, private school, etc. – and the federal government should not incentivize one over another.
While the four-year formalized college education is held as the gold standard by many, it really shouldn’t be. For some it is absolutely the right route, but for others, higher education may not be necessary or they may be better served and prepared for work through an apprenticeship program or short-term, highly focused instruction. Again, Senator Lee believes choice and options are important. At the end of the day, higher education should prepare the upcoming generation for success in today’s workforce. For this to be accomplished and the cost of post-secondary education to decrease, greater transparency, accountability, and competition are needed.
American entrepreneurs and creators have made the United States the global leader in science and technology. Their innovation and advances in technology have transformed the quality of life of people throughout the world, including millions of Americans.
As technology improves and new and growing markets emerge, there will always be a temptation in Washington to expand the federal government’s regulatory role over the private sector and attempt to centrally control our innovation. However, Senator Lee believes a responsible approach to technology policy is one where the federal government restrains itself to its limited constitutional authorities and even then only acts in a manner that is narrowly tailored to address the specific challenge. This authority must be exercised carefully because government intervention tends to hinder, rather than empower, American innovators and can insulate the largest, most powerful companies from their competitors. As tech companies acquire more power and exercise more control over our access to information, our antitrust enforcers must play a more active role to promote and protect competition.
As the internet has grown and transformed how Americans share information, purchase and transport goods, and consume news, the federal government has needed and will continue to need to revisit debates over government regulation of speech, corporate conduct, competition, and transportation. If we want reforms to successfully combat discriminatory action, ensure competition, and crack down on obscene content to protect our children, all while preserving a fair marketplace and continued innovation, Senator Lee believes Congress must engage in robust debate, exercise its limited, proper role, and consider how its actions may lead to other consequences.
The Second Amendment guarantees Americans the fundamental right “to keep and bear arms”. The Supreme Court correctly interpreted this guarantee as an individual right as opposed to a collective right enjoyed only by colonial militias. Many gun control efforts threaten the rights of law-abiding Americans while criminals intent on hurting themselves or others continue to ignore the law. These efforts also harm the ability of Americans to protect themselves and their families, disproportionately hurting minorities and those living in high-crime areas. Senator Lee has led the fight against efforts to further restrict the ability of law-abiding Americans to exercise this fundamental right and he supports efforts to roll back existing gun control laws.
Too often we conservatives define ourselves in terms of what we are against. And while it is important to oppose the policies of an overreaching and unsustainable federal government, we must also make a positive case for conservative ideas; ideas that create a space for a conservative vision of society to flourish.
The foundational insight of this vision is the belief that the essence of of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation. Cooperation between husbands and wives; parents and children; families and congregations; businesses and customers; entrepreneurs and employees; clubs, teams, and associations.
Freedom doesn’t mean “you’re on your own.” It means “we’re all in this together.”
This conservative vision for society is not anti-government. Civil society depends on a just, transparent, and accountable government to enforce the rule of law.
But a government that tries to do too many things can end up stifling human cooperation instead of enabling it. Big government turns citizens into supplicants, capitalists into cronies, and cooperative communities, into competing special interests.
In a free and civil society, your success depends on how well you serve others.
In a society dependent on big government, success is determined by how many votes you can buy with other people’s money.
The items in the conservative agenda below are designed to enhance human cooperation by limiting the size and scope of a federal government which the vast majority of Americans says is far too big and does not trust.
The free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of assembly are each absolutely essential to the health of our Republic. That is why the Founding Fathers enshrined them all in the First Amendment.
Unfortunately, these freedoms are currently under assault.
Whatever one believes about the definition of marriage, one would hope that those who support same-sex marriage would respect the religious liberty of those who do not.
But that is not what is happening. Some same-sex marriage extremists are now trying to use the power of the state to punish those that have traditional religious beliefs about marriage.
Americans who believe in a traditional definition of marriage are now in danger of having their business licenses revoked; colleges with similar beliefs could lose their accreditation; military chaplains could be court-martialed; and faith-based hospitals could lose federal funding.
The freedom of speech is also under assault in Congress where some have pushed to repeal the First Amendment in a manner that would give sitting Members of Congress the power to control what is and is not said about them.
Every human life is precious from its very beginning. Every individual, regardless of age, health, or condition of dependency, deserves the respect and protection of society. And expectant mothers deserve early and consistent care.
Women and children in the United States deserve better than the 56,145,920 abortions that have been performed in the United States since the Supreme Court rulings in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton.
It’s essential for the Federal government respect each human life.
There is abundant evidence, that by 20 weeks, the unborn child has the capacity to experience pain during typical abortion procedures. On this basis, it is vital to outlaw abortion after that point, except when an acute physical condition endangers the life of the mother, or in cases of rape, or cases of incest against a minor.
The United States is the only advanced country that does not restrict sex-selection through law. Countries with longstanding experience with sex-selection abortion—such as India, the United Kingdom, and China—have enacted complete bans, have successfully prosecuted offenders, and have steadily continued to strengthen prohibitions and penalties. The victims of sex-selection abortion are overwhelmingly female, and most sex-selection abortions are grisly, later-term abortions, likely occurring after the child becomes "pain-capable."
America owes its veterans and their families an enormous debt of gratitude for putting themselves at risk to protect our rights and freedoms. Some have made the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard our lives, and for that, Americans will be forever grateful.
It is one of the highest priorities of the federal government to provide for the common defense of our country, which includes providing robust care for our veterans and their families. This starts with ensuring that preparations for any military action, regardless of size, includes consideration for the current and future needs of the service-members who will participate in those missions.
In recent years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has been rightfully criticized for failing to meet the most basic standards that Americans expect for veterans. Senator Lee has worked to ensure that the VA is made accountable and able to exceed expectations in providing the benefits and care promised to veterans and their families. He has also sought to encourage the use of technological advances and new ideas to better provide services and resolve long-standing problems in the bureaucracy. This will ultimately give veterans more options for service and more control over their choices, while continuing to provide the military branches with the recruitment and retention tools they need to keep our forces in a high state of readiness.
The authors of the Constitution intended Congress to be first among the federal government’s three co-equal branches. Endowed with the power to legislate, tax, spend, and oversee the weaker Executive and Judicial branches – while simultaneously held to tighter public accountability – Congress was meant to be the driving force in federal policymaking.
It is often said we now live in two Americas. Nowhere is that description truer than when it comes to land owned by the federal government.
In the United States east of the Rockies, the federal government owns just 4 percent of all land. But west of the Rockies, the federal government owns more than half of all land including almost two thirds of all land in Utah.
When an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy owns and manages more than half the land in your state, that is a recipe for disaster.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Section 9 of the federal legislation that created Utah said that federally owned land within the state of Utah, “shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said state into the union.”
Similar language in enabling acts for Missouri and North Dakota were honored. Almost all of the federally owned land in those states was sold decades ago.
But Congress has not honored that promise to sell federal land in Utah or most of the west. They should. Sen. Lee is fighting to make Congress keep that promise and to mitigate the damage the federal government is inflicting on rural communities in the meantime.
Signed into law in 1906, the Antiquities Act gives the president the power to unilaterally designate tracts of federal land as “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.”
The purpose of the law is to enable the Executive to act quickly to protect archeological sites on federal lands from looting, destruction, or vandalism.
But the Antiquities Act was designed to have limits. It instructs the president to restrict the designation of national monuments to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”
This is not how President Clinton acted when created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and it is not how President Obama is threatening to act by creating a Bears Ears monument this year.
The American people deserve a voice in how federal land is managed. That is why Sen. Lee has offered an amendment to the Antiquities Act that would still allow the president to designate land as a monument, but then states and Congress would have to then ratify that decision before it could become permanent.
Land owned by the federal government is beyond local government jurisdiction, including taxing jurisdiction. This means many rural western counties lack the property tax base that urban and eastern counties take for granted.
There is a program, “Payment in Lieu of Taxes,” that compensates rural counties for this loss of revenue, but Congress does not fully fund this program every year. Ultimately, Congress should honor its promise to sell federal land in western states. But until then, they should at least make rural counties financially whole.