This week, former Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln (D) lead a cadre of small business owners from a number of states to Washington in an attempt to convince Congress that their commitment to over-regulating American entrepreneurs is a surefire way to destroy the American economy.
Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Dan Danner, the chief executive of the National Federation of Independent Business, signaled Wednesday that taking some of the regulatory load off smaller companies would help in the current battle against high unemployment.
“The message that we’re trying to leave is that if we want to create more jobs and make the economy better, how do we somehow get this disproportionate burden of ever increasing new regulations off the backs of the people who create the jobs?” Danner said at an event launching his group’s Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations campaign.
According to the Small Business Administration, regulations on American small businesses, which comprise 60 percent of all private-sector jobs and account for about two thirds of jobs created each year, deprive the American economy of $1.75 trillion annually. By reducing – or at least compromising – on current regulations and letting go of the nearly 4,200 regulations on the table right now to be passed this session, Congress could stimulate one of the fastest-growing American industries. Unfortunately for Blanche Lincoln and her team of American business owners, Congress will be hard to convince.
Lincoln is trying at a very unique time, though, when quick action could prevent a lot of further harm to the American economy. As we stated, 4,200 regulations are in the pipeline, just waiting for Congressional approval. Of those, 845 directly affect small businesses. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are also 330 new EPA regulations coming down the pipe, all of which are designed to specifically regulate how American small businesses do their job. Without expensive lawyers to fill out regulatory paperwork, and expensive lobbyists to fight the fight on their behalf, small businesses usually just take the regulations sitting down, devoting time and money they could spend growing their businesses and hiring more out of work Americans to doing dirty work provided to them by the US government.
Although not perfectly conservative, Lincoln and her organization are proposing a set of guidelines that would help Congress and the Obama administration curb regulations and more closely analyze the impact of their actions on small business owners.
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