Big, Beautiful Bill

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, I will have no comment on that last comment from my colleague from Utah.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to join my colleagues tonight in recognition of National Small Business Week, and actually, all the parts we have talked about are connected.

National Small Business Week recognizes the importance of the small businesses throughout all of our communities, and the numbers aren't that different from State to State.

In my home State of Kansas, 99 percent of the businesses that operate are small businesses. Whether they are small businesses on Main Street, small mom-and-pop shops, little manufacturing operations, farming operations, or supporting operations, 99 percent of our businesses are small businesses.

Those 99 percent in my State employ about 600,000 Kansans, which is roughly half the total number of Kansans who work. All but 1 percent our businesses, 99 percent, employ half of our people who rely on them for their livelihood, for their hope, for their jobs, for their benefits in many cases, and for filling their days because they, obviously, have to work in order to support their families and pursue their dreams.

We cannot overstate the importance of small businesses to all of us, the people we represent. Yet, that often doesn't get reflected in the decisions and the actions that come out of this town.

My colleagues have talked a bit about reconciliation, and I say these are connected because we are going to make large policy decisions here in the House, in the Senate, and with the President over the course of the coming weeks that are going to have huge implications for all of those small businesses on our Main Streets and all of those individuals who work in them and rely on them for their livelihoods.

We talk a lot about the tax implications. That is not my focus this evening. It is critically important. We have to extend the small business and middle-class tax relief so that those businesses can continue to operate and continue to employ the people we represent.

I want to talk a little bit tonight about the regulatory environment and the burden that we have created--really, a tax by another means. When the government says to a small business, ``thou shalt do this,'' the compliance cost of doing it is borne by that business, and it comes out of their bottom line or out of their pockets. It takes away from their ability to invest in expanding, growing, and hiring more people. It has the same effect as taking another dollar of tax out of their pocket to pay not for their priorities, their community's priorities, or their employees' priorities, but for the government's priorities. That is true whether it is a dollar taken out of their pockets collected in tax, in cash, or whether it is a dollar taken out of their pockets and ordered by the government to be used to comply with a government requirement, a mandate, a regulation.

I am one who believes, because my constituents have told me this, that one of the most important things we can and must do in this Congress is make real progress on regulatory relief for the small businesses that all of our communities rely on. We have begun to take some steps.

You know, Mr. Speaker, that we are currently using one of several tools available to us in this body to undo some--a small number, but some--of the newer regulations that have piled burdens on our small businesses. We are using the Congressional Review Act. We only have a short amount of time that we can use that tool, so we have to strike while the iron is hot.

So far, in the House, we have used that tool to propose undoing 15 new regulations that were adopted in roughly the last 6 months of the prior administration. Of those 15 that we have approved here, 3 have been signed into law by the President. We have done three. Another six have been approved by the Senate and are currently awaiting President Trump's signature. Then, there are an additional six that are awaiting consideration and, I hope and expect, passage in the Senate.

That is good. It is a good thing. We are using the tool available to try to make progress to provide some relief for those small businesses, but, Mr. Speaker, it is barely a drop in the bucket.

The chart next to me was compiled by George Washington University. It shows the number of pages in the Federal Register, starting back in 1950. The Federal Register, of course, is the government book, the government entity, where all the agency regulations, not the laws passed by this body, but the agency regulations, the bureaucratic regulations, get published.

They have the force and effect of law. They are just as burdensome and binding on somebody running a mom-and-pop shop on Main Street in Kansas as is a statute enacted by this body. Usually, they are regulations adopted by an agency at the direction or, arguably, with the permission of this body. We fight over that sometimes when agencies exceed the authority they were given.

There is a penchant here in Congress to avoid some of the hard decisions and just ship it downtown, let the agencies have a lot of running room. As a result of that, you get lots of decisions. Sometimes, they are not consistent.

One administration goes one way, and another administration goes the next way, or they adopt one regulation, then pile another regulation on top of it, and then another on top of that. I heard a term the other day--I had never heard it before--``coral reefing,'' this idea that you lay down something that is living and makes sense, then that layer dies, and you just build another on top and another on top. Eventually, you get this giant dead mass. That is what we have done with a lot of these agency regulations. Part of it is Congress' fault. Part of it is the agency's fault.

If you look at this chart, Mr. Speaker, back in 1950, roughly the time they started publishing the Federal Register, compiling all these agency rules, diktats, actions, there were about 10,000 pages. That is about how long it was, the sum of all regulations adopted by agencies. The year I was born in, 1968, it had grown fivefold to 50,000 pages. When this chart was compiled about a year ago, a little more, it was nearly 200,000 pages. Nearly 200,000 pages of regulations that folks in our country, our small businesses, have to comply with.

By the way, to put that in comparison, the number of pages in the U.S. Code, the laws actually adopted by the people's Representatives in this body, last time it was compiled, it was around 60,000 pages, so about four times, roughly, three or four times as many rules and requirements on Main Street businesses written by people nobody out in the real world ever voted for as opposed to laws that their elected Representatives are accountable for.

By the way, this chart is not current. It doesn't include those regulations piled on top of this last tallest bar. Since this chart was compiled, we know that in the last 5 months of the Biden administration alone, more than 1,400 new regulations were adopted and shoved out the door. That is not 1,400 pages. That is 1,400 regulations, most of which were long, so this chart is actually much higher.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to remind all of my colleagues and all of us who serve in these roles how important it is that, during this Small Business Week, as we are doing our reconciliation bill and doing all the things we do, we not forget about this hidden tax, that we have created this burden that we have placed on the 99 percent of small businesses in our community, which employ half the people working in my State, making it harder for them to do what they do, what we rely on them to do, what we count on them to do, and, more importantly, what the people we represent, our constituents, count on them to do.

We can't lose sight of it. We must fix this system, tear down some of the coral reef, and get those lines moving back down.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source