WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Cresent Hardy (NV-4) today spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives to highlight how Congress is working to aid small businesses and encourage job creation in Nevada and across the nation, by reining in the creation of burdensome regulations.
Congressman Hardy was an original cosponsor of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act of 2015, H.R. 427, which passed with bipartisan support in the House yesterday, 243 to 165.
“As a former small business owner, I’m not going to let Nevada’s entrepreneurs and job creators be weighed down like this anymore,” Hardy said after the vote. “Anyone who has ever owned or run a business understands the effects of unchecked government regulations on the American economy. By allowing Washington bureaucrats to continue to stuff an overwhelming amount of regulations into congressionally passed legislation, we are essentially handing over authority to federal agencies to legislate as they please.”
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Background, per Republican Study Committee:
- By 2014, the new regulations issued under President Obama filled 486,500 pages of the federal register. An additional 2,375 rules were proposed by the Administration in 2014 alone.
- The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the last five years, the Obama Administration has issued 82 “major rules” – or rules with more than $100 million in economic impact – each year.
- The price that businesses pay to comply with complicated regulations is around $1.86 trillion each year, according to a 2014 report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
- Regulations are especially hard for America’s small businesses. “It’s getting more expensive to be an employer and small business owners say that’s making it harder for them to make money,” the Associated Press reported last week. “Small companies also face the prospect of higher overtime expenses under a proposed federal regulation.”
- Federal regulations also disproportionately impact America’s manufacturers, especially small manufacturers. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that compliance with federal regulation costs manufacturers with fewer than 50 employees a whopping $34,671 a year.
What a bunch of hooey! 486,500 pages? I knew Republicans were bad at math, but that is ridiculous!
Here is a breakdown of the number of pages added to the Code of Federal Regulations during the GWB presidency and the BHO presidency (through 2014):
Total %
Prez Proposed Total Pages Increase
Year Rules Docs Rules Notices Blanks Pages – Blanks in Pages
================================================================
2001 19,643 1,057 14,666 28,939 3,264 67,702 64,438 -13.22%
2002 19,233 467 18,640 37,087 4,726 80,332 75,606 17.33%
2003 22,670 468 17,357 30,608 4,529 75,798 71,269 -5.74%
2004 22,546 455 19,332 33,212 3,177 78,852 75,675 6.18%
2005 23,041 436 18,260 32,010 3,907 77,777 73,870 -2.39%
2006 22,347 429 19,794 32,240 3,787 78,724 74,937 1.44%
2007 22,771 525 18,611 30,093 2,318 74,408 72,090 -3.80%
2008 26,320 533 18,648 33,881 1,265 80,700 79,435 10.19%
2009 20,782 595 16,681 30,540 1,045 69,643 68,598 -13.64%
2010 24,914 611 21,844 34,036 1,075 82,480 81,405 18.67%
2011 26,274 522 23,193 31,258 1,168 82,415 81,247 -0.19%
2012 24,690 595 20,096 33,580 1,089 80,050 78,961 -2.81%
2013 26,417 635 20,619 31,640 1,151 80,462 79,311 0.44%
2014 24,861 644 20,731 31,451 1,109 78,796 77,687 -2.05%
================================================================
Ref: https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2015/05/OFR-STATISTICS-CHARTS-ALL1-1-1-2014.pdf
UH — there were only 78,796 pages in the CFR at the conclusion of 2014! Rep. Hardy, as a member of Congress, should know better. When Congress passes any bill that becomes law, it modifies existing pages within the CFR, it doesn’t just merely add MORE to the mix — it changes/replaces existing pages and adds/subtracts others.
If Rep. Hardy wants to start claiming things about CBO reports regarding bills that may or may not have been passed by both Houses of Congress and signed into Law by a President, maybe he should take the time to read this article from 2005 (and it’s still true to this day): “CBO Data Show Tax Cuts Have Played Much Larger Role than Domestic Spending Increases in Fueling the Deficit”[http://www.cbpp.org/research/cbo-data-show-tax-cuts-have-played-much-larger-role-than-domestic-spending-increases-in]
Oh—and those compliance costs—those would be things like having to provide necessary safety equipment for their employees, provide access to differently-abled employees, instituting measures to ensure they are not polluting our air and water, cleaning up after themselves, etc. Those are the costs of doing business and being a responsible member of our civil society. Shame on you for the distortions.
Absolute hogwash. Hardy, who went bankrupt as a small businessman, is promoting the anti-government line for his brain-dead, cliven bundy supporting constituency. He is embarrassment to his community that he claims to represent.