These questions are culled from phone calls, letters, faxes and e-mails sent to Rep. Gallegly's Camarillo, Solvang, and Washington offices. Each week Rep. Gallegly adds another question and answer. Please add your comments.
August 19, 2011
Question: What are you doing to help businesses create more jobs?
Answer: Last week, I explained how requiring all employers to use E-Verify will help open up millions of jobs for American workers that are currently held by illegal immigrants. Next week, I will address how our corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the world, is putting U.S. employers at a disadvantage in our global economy.
But this week, I want to focus on how we can improve the business climate and make it easier for employers to invest more resources into job creation and product development.
Whenever I meet with business owners in the 24th District – the job creators – they always tell me how overly burdensome regulations are hurting their businesses. I constantly hear that they are reluctant to hire new employees because of uncertainty, much caused by our own government.
Obviously, some government regulations are necessary to ensure health and safety, but unnecessary regulations are costly, hurt the economy and kill jobs.
According to a study by the Small Business Administration, federal regulations cost the U.S. economy more than $1.75 trillion in 2008, which is $15,586 for every U.S. household. By comparison, private spending on health care was $10,500 per household in 2008.
And the number of proposed regulations is growing at an alarming rate. The government regulatory website, www.reginfo.gov, lists 4,257 pending proposed rules, which is 314 more than were pending last year.
The President acknowledged that too many regulations are unnecessary and hurt economic growth when he ordered a limited review of federal regulations earlier this year. Unfortunately, the President's review doesn't go far enough. The number of pending regulations that will have a significant impact on our economy, which is defined as costing businesses and consumers more than $100 million, is growing at an alarming rate. Over the last 25 years, federal regulators have proposed fewer than 40 significant regulations a year on average. But the Obama administration proposed 59 regulations in 2009 and 62 in 2010.
Bureaucrats, who are not accountable to the public, draft regulations that impose sweeping requirements on businesses and consumers.
I am a cosponsor of a bill, H.R. 10, the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act of 2011, that would address this problem. H.R. 10 would simply require Congress to approve any regulations that would have a significant impact on our economy. The bill will provide more accountability in the regulatory process going forward.
This commonsense proposal will go a long way towards reining in unnecessary regulations and getting our economy back on track.
For more information on my positions on the economy, please see my Key Issue: Economy page.
For previous Questions of the Week chronologically and by topic, please see my Questions of the Week page.
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