Karen Beagle had already complied with all the local Troy, Ohio, environmental regulations her small electronics business faced when along came the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with orders to scrap her existing septic system and replace it with an expensive and unnecessary sewer hookup.
Brad Muller's Charlotte, N.C., pipe and foundry companies are ensnared by the federal rule book, too, forced to spend millions of dollars each year complying with environmental regulations.
These are just two of America's millions of small and independent businesses that daily suffer new and unexpected burdens handed them by an increasingly aggressive federal bureaucracy flexing its regulatory muscle far beyond the original intent of Congress.
In the current economic climate, small businesses can no longer create the jobs and economic growth that once kept the nation's economy above water.
And hopes for a recovery of those opportunities are rapidly moving farther out of reach as President Obama ramps up the federal bureaucracy's rule-making machine.
The National Federation of Independent Business will not stand idly by while this government threatens innovators like Karen and Brad. We're fighting back with a new campaign -- Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations -- that will alert the nation to this growing danger and demand corrective action by Obama. We'll point out barriers and muster support to restrain officials who sidestep the laws as written.
Since 2005, pending federal regulations classified as "major" or "economically significant" (costing our economy more than $100 million) have soared 60 percent.
And of the more than 4,200 new regulations federal bureaucrats under Obama currently have ready to roll out, 845 have been identified as policy changes that will negatively impact small businesses.
It costs the average small business more than $10,500 per employee to comply with federal regulations alone. Last year, that represented a $1.75 trillion drag on our economy, contributing to slower growth and greater unemployment.
Washington regulators, unlike small businesses, have little concern whether private-sector enterprises have the financial resources or trained staffs necessary to deal with their growing mountain of restrictions and requirements. Just complying with federal environmental regulations costs small businesses 364 percent more than it does their larger counterparts.
Does EPA worry about the nation's 9.2 percent unemployment rate or the spiraling debt? Obviously not. It's pushing to nearly double the strength of permissible dust standards for family farms and other workplaces.
And the agency proposes to dramatically tighten the ozone threshold -- which was lowered just three years ago -- that could throw 90 percent of the nation, including pristine Yellowstone National Park, out of federal compliance and jeopardize 7.3 million jobs.
Nor does anyone at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration apparently care how Main Street or its employees are suffering. OSHA's Injury and Illness Prevention Program forces small businesses to grapple with an extensive paperwork process to identify all potential safety and health threats, however small.
And these are just two federal agencies. There are lots of others.
Karen Beagle, Brad Muller and millions of small-business owners like them can be key job creators for the United States. But forcing them to wade through the Code of Federal Regulations, currently 150,000 pages long and growing daily, guarantees that their entrepreneurial skills, innovative energy and hard-earned dollars will not be used to put America back on track and back to work.
America needs to see and hear the growing danger of a federal government dead set on printing new regulations as fast as it is printing money to hide the national debt.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/08/new-regs-are-flying-washingtons-printing-presses-money
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