Regulatory Reform
America’s Job Creators Need a Clear Direction
A dramatic increase in burdensome regulation by the Congress and administration is causing tremendous uncertainty for business owners around the country. The path to recovery lies in bringing certainty to the regulatory environment and putting in place smart policies that allow American businesses and the economy to grow.
But in today’s difficult economic climate—with high unemployment, sluggish growth, crumbling infrastructure, and tough global competition—it’s critical that Congress and the administration recognize that the regulatory burden and uncertainty they have imposed on job creators has reached a tipping point.
The cumulative impact of decades of regulations are like lead weights on America’s footrace to prosperity. We’ve seen a dramatic acceleration of regulations, rulemakings, and mandates. Taken together, they are breeding crippling uncertainty, quashing individual initiative, delaying and obstructing the rebuilding of America, and eroding our global competitiveness.
We have wandered too far off the path envisioned by our Founding Fathers of a government with few and defined powers. Government was supposed to be about doing only a few things; today government is about doing nearly everything. It has intruded in our business and personal lives in ways unimaginable to the wise men who gathered in Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787. And to increasingly little positive benefit.
Our Project on Regulatory Reform is working to continually tell the story to the American people about the massive costs of procedural defects and excessive regulations on jobs and on their personal and economic freedom. Check in each week to read a new chapter of the story.
Click here to browse the cases.
The U.S. Chamber is working in tandem with Congress and the Administration to restore badly needed balance, restraint, and common sense to the regulatory process. We are pleased that Congress is beginning to take action in this area, as evidenced by initial activity related to the REINS Act and others. Read about the REINS Act and send a letter to your elected officials encouraging them to pass this bill.
FINANCIAL REGULATION
- $20 billion of costs.
- Thousands of pages of implementing regulations.
- Nearly 500 regulatory rulemakings, 60 studies, and 93 reports.
- Compare: Sarbanes-Oxley required only 16 rulemakings and 6 studies.
Health Care
- 2,500-page health care law.
- Hundreds of billions of dollars in new business taxes.
- Thousands of pages of new regulations aimed at individuals, businesses, health care industry providers, and states.
- The law’s long implementation time frame (some provisions don’t kick in until 2018) makes business planning difficult.
Labor relations
- The Labor Department is considering several burdensome policies, including a new record-keeping regulation pertaining to employee classification.
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is moving forward on an expansive safety and health program regulation that could require businesses to revamp their existing programs.
- Meanwhile, the newly appointed National Labor Relations Board is expected to make sweeping changes in rules governing every facet of union-management relations.
Energy & environment
- The House passed a climate bill with 1,200 new programs and mandates and a price tag over $1 trillion. The Senate could still pass its own version.
- EPA is moving forward with 30 major economic rules and 172 major policy rules.
- A flawed permitting process for energy projects is responsible for roughly $560 billion in lost private energy investment and 250,000 jobs.
- The drilling moratorium off the Gulf Coast has cost 20,000 jobs in Louisiana alone.