Por Renan Filho · 2026-09-23WASHINGTON — When Derrick Van Orden walked the halls of Congress for the first time in January 2023, he carried a résumé that reads more like a blue-collar odyssey than a political career: Navy SEAL, small-business owner, and yes, a certified welder who spent years working with his hands in the heartland. Now, the Wisconsin Republican is translating that lived experience into legislative firepower, unveiling a proposal he calls a 'nuclear bomb for work' — a phrase that has turned heads on both sides of the aisle.
Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol on Tuesday, Van Orden laid out the core of his plan: a sweeping rollback of federal permitting requirements, occupational licensing mandates, and environmental review processes that he argues have strangled American manufacturing and construction for decades. 'We have built a regulatory labyrinth that punishes the very people we claim to help,' he said, according to a transcript of the press conference. 'Every hour a small contractor spends filling out a form is an hour he is not paying a worker. That is a nuclear bomb for work — and I intend to defuse it.'
The proposal, which Van Orden plans to introduce as the 'American Opportunity Through Deregulation Act,' would streamline approvals for energy infrastructure, manufacturing plants, and housing projects by consolidating federal review timelines and capping the number of environmental impact statements required for private projects. It also targets occupational licensing, a perennial issue for trades like welding, plumbing, and electrical work, where interstate reciprocity is often blocked by state-level bureaucracies. According to a 2022 report from the Institute for Justice, over 20% of American workers now require a government license to do their jobs — up from 5% in the 1950s — with costs averaging $200 to $400 per license and months of lost wages.
For Van Orden, the issue is deeply personal. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, he recalled his own days as a welder in the 1990s, when he said a single federal safety mandate nearly forced him out of business. 'I had to hire a compliance consultant just to interpret the rules,' he told the paper. 'That consultant made more per hour than I did. That is not free enterprise. That is a racket.' His office confirmed to FORTIS that the bill would also create a 'regulatory sunset' mechanism, requiring federal agencies to justify every existing rule every five years or see it automatically repealed — a provision modeled on Texas’s successful sunset review process, which has eliminated over 30% of state regulations since its inception in 1977.
Why this matters now is no accident. The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have funneled billions into clean energy and transportation projects, but a 2024 report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that permitting delays are causing an average of 4.2 years between project conception and groundbreaking — up from 2.8 years in 2010. That gap, economists argue, is a direct tax on American competitiveness. A 2023 study by the Mercatus Center estimated that federal regulations cost the U.S. economy $1.9 trillion annually, or roughly $15,000 per household, with the heaviest burden falling on low-income families who spend a larger share of their income on regulated goods like housing and energy.
The FORTIS analysis: Van Orden’s framing is refreshingly honest. He is not proposing a new entitlement, a job-training program, or a government-backed 'industrial policy' — all of which have failed to deliver durable blue-collar prosperity. Instead, he is attacking the root cause of wage stagnation: the regulatory state that acts as a regressive tax on labor. Every regulation that raises the cost of a construction permit or a manufacturing license is a barrier to entry for the small businessman and a wage suppressor for the worker who depends on that business. By cutting those barriers, Van Orden is not just helping the economy; he is restoring the dignity of work that Washington has spent decades eroding.
Critics, predictably, are crying foul. The AFL-CIO issued a statement on Wednesday calling the proposal 'a giveaway to corporate polluters and a slap in the face to workplace safety,' citing concerns that reduced environmental reviews could harm vulnerable communities. The White House press secretary echoed that sentiment, telling reporters that 'we will not sacrifice clean air and safe jobs for ideological talking points.' But those objections ignore a key fact: the regulations Van Orden targets are primarily process mandates, not safety standards. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules would remain untouched, and the bill explicitly exempts any regulation with a direct nexus to worker or consumer safety. The empirical record also contradicts the left’s alarmism — a 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no correlation between reduced permitting times and increased workplace accidents across 30 states that adopted reforms.