In January 2013, Angus King was sworn in as Maine’s first Independent United States Senator, filling the same seat once held by storied Maine leaders Edmund Muskie, George Mitchell, and Olympia Snowe.
A strong believer in the need for greater bipartisan dialogue and relationship building, Senator King is proud to join the long line of thoughtful, independent leaders from the State of Maine, and he works hard every day to bring Republicans and Democrats together to find common-sense solutions for Maine and America. He is a proven consensus-builder who “calls ‘em like he sees ‘em”, putting civility and respect ahead of political ideology.
I believe in sensible, scale-appropriate regulations that protect the things we value – like the environment, public health, and safety – without hampering innovation or imposing excessive burdens on individuals and businesses. I helped launch the Senate Regulations Caucus to address regulatory reform at the federal level. With many legislative efforts currently underway to address over-regulation, the goal of the Senate Regulations Caucus is to unify and lead these efforts to advance meaningful, bipartisan regulatory reform in Congress.
Business owners and entrepreneurs in Maine regularly tell me that the single greatest obstacle to economic growth continues to be overly-burdensome regulations, but as thousands of new rules are proposed every year, Congress isn’t taking any serious steps to address the mountain of regulations that already exist. Because of this, reforming our regulatory processes and reducing overlapping or duplicative regulations is one of my top priorities.