Saturday, October 13, 2012

The curse of regulatory bureaucracy


GOP: 40% of every small-business dollar goes to pay for federal regs

Michael Ramirez / Investor's Business Daily
Michael Ramirez / Investor's Business Daily
Republican Weekly Remarks by House Candidate Markwayne Mullin
Hello, I’m Markwayne Mullin. I was born and raised here in eastern Oklahoma. I met and married, Christie, my high school sweetheart here. I run a small business here. And I’m the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative here.
'Representative’ is a title I take very seriously. A lot of people call them ‘congressmen,’ but I don’t want to be a man of the Congress. I’m asking to go to Washington to represent the values and priorities of my neighbors. And right now, after nearly four years of broken promises and failed policies, their top priority is jobs.
Here’s my perspective. Shortly after I graduated high school, my dad came to me and said, ‘if you want to take over the family business, it’s yours. If not, I’m shutting it down.’  What happened was, my dad was real sick in the 90s, wasn’t able to run his plumbing business, and the people he trusted ran it into the ground.  The company was carrying more than half-a-million dollars in debt, half of which was immediate past due. Just six employees at the time.
It took three-and-a-half years, but we got the company out of debt.  We now employ more than 120 people and have more than 80 trucks on the road, making it Oklahoma’s largest service company.
I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, especially when I think back to how unsure I was about what I was getting into.  Many of the folks I meet on the campaign trail have the same hesitation about the challenges our country is facing.  They ask me, have we gone too far off track?  Do you really think we can turn this around?
My answer, hands down, is yes. And I know exactly where I and many of my fellow small businesses would start.
Right now, I spend more than 40 cents of every dollar the company takes in on complying with regulations.  You heard that right: more than forty cents.  When I first started using that figure, people would say, ‘wait, you’re talking about taxes too, right’?  Nope, that is just what we spend on regulations.
You don’t have to take my word for it. The Small Business Administration recently revealed that federal regulations cost small businesses $1.7 trillion per year. 
And this is before most of ObamaCare takes effect. 
All told, the Obama administration has — get this — 4,000 regulations in the pipeline.  Roll out all that red tape, and is it any wonder jobs are overseas and so many job-seekers have stopped looking for work? 
If we’re serious about keeping jobs here and bringing jobs home, we need to stop burdening small businesses with excessive and unnecessary regulations.  We need to get government out of the way.
Mitt Romney gets it; he’s made supporting small businesses a key plank of his jobs plan. And the Republican majority in the House has passed several bipartisan, common-sense proposals to address excessive regulations that impose unnecessary costs and hurt jobs.  One bill — this is a great idea — gives the American people a say, through their elected representatives, before the government can implement such rules.
Unfortunately, these jobs bills have died in the Democratic-led Senate. Democratic leaders won't act, and President Obama hasn't pressed them to, because they support piling on regulations that make it harder to hire, work and do business in the U.S. 
They aren’t representing us — they’re representing government, so much so that they want to impose a ‘fiscal cliff’ tax hike on small businesses so they can get more money to spend on more government — never mind the fact that this tax hike would destroy more than 700,000 jobs. Enough, Mr. President.
Our economy doesn’t need more meddling — it needs more certainty. And we don’t need more regulators — we need more representatives who understand what it takes to create jobs, and who will inspire us to overcome doubt and commit ourselves to a future of growth and prosperity.
Thank for you listening, and God bless the United States of America.     ####


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