Issue Position: Regulations

Issue Position

Responsible REGULATION of personal and business activities mean … regulating individual and business activities only when the activity poses a real risk to other individuals, to the economy, or to the environment … not imposing more regulation than is necessary … balancing the cost of regulatory compliance with the burden imposed on individuals, business and the economy.

No one likes to be regulated--especially not by government. But anyone who opposes all regulation is either a fool or a hypocrite.

I am an ardent believer in a free-market economy. I believe that business should be mostly free of government regulation, but I do not believe that it should be wholly free of regulation.

The issue is not "regulation" versus "no regulation". The issue is how much regulation is necessary--and how much is too much?

Today, there are many members of Congress who want to free business from all "job killing" regulations. These congressmen seem to have forgotten what happens when business in free to "regulate" itself.

In the early 1900′s, business was largely unregulated, and the great "robber barons"--John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan to name a few--amassed great fortunes. Today, we admire them as great businessmen, but we forget why they were so successful.

At the time, there were no environmental regulations, no unions, no labor laws, no regulations on business practices and no regulations of financial markets. The robber barons were so successful because they were free to pollute out rivers and lakes, make their employees (including children) work long hours, in toxic and dangerous workplaces, for pitiful wages and completely control the market price for their products by driving out competitors.

Financial markets were also completely free of regulation, and the Great Depression was the direct consequence of that lack of regulation.

As a result of the abusive business practices of the time, Congress finally acted by implementing the child labor laws, wage and hour laws, workplace safety laws, anti-trust laws and securities and banking laws.

Now, there are members of Congress who want to return us to the past.

I readily concede that many businesses are over-regulated and compliance costs impose great burdens on business. But, as history has shown, under-regulation is bad for society and the economy as a whole.

Regulations should be limited to conduct that affects the physical or financial health or safety of the people--individually and collectively--and preventing the exploitation of those who lack power by those who have power.

We must also recognize that the regulatory bureaucracy often imposes burdens, and costs, on businesses that are more harmful to the economy than the regulations themselves. We must minimize these burdens by making the regulatory approval process more efficient. For instance, we might consider enacting a "default approval" system under which a proposed action is deemed approved is not acted on by the regulatory agency within a specified period of time.

In the current political climate, it has become popular for Republicans to blame the President for the problem of over-regulation. But this argument puts the blame in the wrong place. The agencies of the executive branch--from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Defense--have only the powers that Congress gives them. They cannot do what Congress prohibits, and they must do what Congress mandates. When an agency publishes regulations, it is only doing what Congress, through the relevant legislation, has instructed it to do.

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