Regulation Costs Kill Jobs

Regulation Costs Kill Jobs
by Congressman Mike Simpson

Washington, D.C. - "There are 65 words in the Lord's Prayer, 286 words in the Gettysburg Address, 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, and 27,302 words in the federal regulation governing the sale of potatoes.

This is just one example of the way in which our government's unending fascination with over regulation is reaching ridiculous proportions. For many Americans, there is simply no question that this over regulation is a fundamental obstacle to job creation and further economic recovery.

For small businesses, regulatory burdens can be overwhelming. As recent economic growth numbers demonstrate, when our small businesses prosper, America prospers. That is why I strongly believe we should working in Congress to make America a better place to run a business by reducing the costly burdens of bureaucracy and red tape.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, comprising 99.7 percent of all employers and employing half of all private sector employees. Estimates show that small businesses contribute 60-80 percent of the net new jobs annually.

It's also important to note that small businesses produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. Ironically, the businesses hurt the most by regulatory burdens are the same businesses that add the most new jobs and innovation to our economy. The companies least able to afford large regulatory compliance costs are the very companies that fuel our economic expansion.

Further, firms with fewer than 20 employees spend 60 percent more per employee to comply with federal regulations. Larger firms can absorb regulatory burdens in ways that small firms cannot for obvious reasons, yet the discrepancy in regulatory costs per employee does not reflect this reality. For a business with 20 or less employees, federal regulations will cost $6,975 per employee, but firms with 500 or more employees spend $4, 463 per employee.
To make America a more competitive place to do business, Congress must address this growing problem. That is why I am so pleased that the House of Representatives this week took decisive action to lessen the regulatory burden on small businesses and put more Americans back to work.

Among the provisions passed through the House this week is an effort to provide Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) litigants with the same rights as litigants in every other federal court in the country. The House-passed bills will also increase the membership of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) from 3 to 5 members to ensure that cases are reviewed in a timely fashion and restore independent review of citations issued by OSHA by ensuring that the OSHRC, not OSHA itself, is the party that interprets the law.

Finally, the House is working to require a comprehensive federal review of IRS regulations with a follow-up report to Congress on possible actions to reduce the tax paperwork burden imposed on small businesses. That measure will also require a first-ever multi-agency study of regulatory budgeting to determine if agencies can better manage regulatory burdens on the public.

In addition, I want to commend the National Federation of Independent Business for proposing a regulatory model that holds compliance assistance to be the primary function of regulatory agencies while rendering "command-and-control" enforcement modes secondary. This approach, designed to make government agencies a partner rather than an adversary, will achieve much better results for both employers and employees over time.

Each of these important efforts is aimed at vastly reducing the regulatory burden on our nation's employers while at the same time preserving important workplace safety provisions important to all employees. These efforts are a crucial component of our efforts to improve our economy, grow small businesses, and put out-of-work Americans back on the job."