Reduce Costs to Employers to Help Create Jobs

Unfunded government mandates get in the way of job creation because of the costs they create for employers, especially small businesses.  Small businesses are where 70 percent of new jobs are created in the United States.  Unemployment is at 9.1 percent.  So reducing the burden of unfunded mandates should be a top priority as part of the effort to help create private-sector jobs.

This week, I cosponsored legislation to prevent Congress and federal regulators from imposing such burdens on the private sector, as well as state and local governments, without weighing the costs and benefits.

The proposed bill -- the Unfunded Mandates Accountability Act of 2011 -- would require federal agencies to assess the potential specific effects of new regulations on job creation or job loss.  It would require consideration of market-based and non-government alternatives to regulations.  It would make federal agencies choose the least burdensome regulatory option that achieves the policy goal set out by Congress.  It also would extend the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995 to independent federal agencies, outside of the cabinet-level departments of the federal bureaucracy.  It would permit federal courts to review an agency’s economic impact analysis under the 1995 law.

Too often, legislators and regulators are indifferent to the negative impact of the federal government’s heavy hand.  Workers in this economy can’t afford for Washington to continue to be out of touch with these realities.  Employers need an environment where they can hire workers.  That includes regulatory relief and tax certainty.  Entrepreneurs and others working to create economic activity and jobs need to know what the rules are so they can plan and make investment and hiring decisions.  Washington needs to stay focused on job-generating reforms.

Friday, June 17, 2011