By 2020, the West could produce as much oil and natural gas on a daily basis as the U.S. imports from Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria and Colombia combined, while creating new jobs, doubling investment to $58 billion annually, and providing billions in government revenue. Yet this incredible potential is threatened by the seemingly endless flood of regulation pouring out of Washington.

The latest threat to the West's small businesses and working families comes in the form of new and redundant Interior Department regulations on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which will add an entirely new permitting and monitoring processes to the already astonishing federal bureaucratic maze.

Since nearly every well drilled in the West requires the use of fracking technology, these duplicative new rules will make energy development on public and tribal lands even more burdensome and costly, while diverting much-needed jobs, revenue and economic activity from Western states. Fracking is already heavily regulated at the state level, and these duplicative regulations will not add commensurate environmental protection. In fact, states have successfully regulated fracking for more than 60 years, including on