Bringing a passport agency to Utah.

June 17 – 21, 2024

Passport demand in Utah is enormous, due in part to our population growth and global missionary efforts. After a years-long push by Senator Romney, the State Department this week announced that a passport agency is coming to Salt Lake City to provide Utahns with improved, in-person services. Senator Romney also advanced another major priority by introducing bipartisan legislation that would help prevent wildfires and expedite federal resources for when they strike. His bill incorporates recommendations made by a wildfire commission he secured into law in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. All of this and more below.

Utah is experiencing rapid population growth as it becomes a center for global commerce and tourism—while also being home base for thousands of Latter-day Saints embarking on worldwide religious missions each year. After years of work to improve in-person consular services for Utahns, Senator Romney welcomed an announcement from the State Department that Salt Lake City will be the site of a new passport agency!

The announcement is the result of a provision secured into law by Senator Romney that required the Bureau of Consular Affairs to improve in-person and emergency passport services for Americans living in significant population centers more than a five-hour drive from an existing passport agency. A passport agency in Salt Lake now means that Utahns will not have to travel such long distances to obtain in-person passport services.

Full story by Suzanne Bates and Gitanjali Poonia here.

As the American West gets drier, wildfires are becoming a more significant threat—devastating our communities and costing billions of dollars in damages. Utah averages 800 to 1,000 wildfires annually, making our state one of the most wildfire-prone states in the country. Senators Romney and Kelly (D-AZ) introduced the Enhancing Mitigation and Building Effective Resilience (EMBER) Act, comprehensive bipartisan legislation based on recommendations from the Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission that Senator Romney secured into law in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The EMBER Act would help communities across the country better assess, prevent, and manage wildfires.

Full story by Amy Joe O'Donoghue here.

All flavored e-cigarettes—which are the most popular with youth—are currently illegal, yet they remain easily accessible in stores across our country. In light of the growing illegal e-cigarette market in the United States, Senator Romney urged FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and Attorney General Merrick Garland—heads of the multi-agency task force to combat the illegal distribution and sale of e-cigarettes—to regain control of the e-cigarette marketplace and help curb the rise of youth vaping.

Senator Romney shared the following statement on the Congressional Budget Office’s new baseline projections that the federal deficit will total nearly $2 trillion this year and the public debt will grow to 122 percent of GDP in 2034:

“The national debt is now expected to exceed $50 trillion by 2034! We are saddling our children and grandchildren with insurmountable debt that will leave them in economic ruin. It’s immoral to ignore our spending problem. Washington must work together to stabilize the country’s finances before it’s too late.”

Over the last several years, the System Conservation Pilot Program has proven successful in increasing water efficiency and mitigating the impacts of historic drought. Senators Romney, Hickenlooper (D-CO), Barrasso (R-WY), Bennet (D-CO), and Lummis (R-WY) introduced bipartisan legislation to extend the System Conservation Pilot Program, which was created to test voluntary water conservation measures to manage severe drought in the Colorado River Basin.