Dear Friends,
Behind the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression is the unprecedented growth of federal government regulation.The unemployment rate has now been at over 8% for 42 consecutive months. Before President Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8% for this long since the Great Depression. Even worse, the unemployment rate is up to 8.8% in Florida and a staggering 9.9% here in Miami-Dade County.
A new study by the Phoenix Center concludes that the regulatory burden imposed by the federal government has a severely adverse impact on the private-sector and job creation. By analyzing 50 years of data, the authors determined that just a 5% reduction in the regulatory burden could result in 1.2 million new jobs.
According to a recent Chamber of Commerce Small Business Outlook Survey - 78% of small businesses report that taxation, regulation and Washington legislation makes it harder for them to hire more employees. Also, eight out of 10 say they would rather have Washington stay out of the way than provide a helping hand, a further 86% saying they would rather have more certainty from Washington than more assistance when dealing with the economy.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been going in the wrong direction. In 2011 alone, the administration published regulations that cost businesses $231.4 billion and burned them with 133 million hours of paperwork.
The first key to recovery is easing the regulatory burden on America's job creators, especially small businesses. The House has passed, with my support, over two-dozen bipartisan jobs bills that would provide relief from these record amounts of red tape. The Wall Street Journal called our efforts "the largest overhaul of the rule-making process and larger administrative state since Ronald Reagan, and perhaps longer."
To date, almost none of these important House-passed jobs measures have been acted on in the Senate. Both parties must work together to help get our economy back to creating jobs and clear away this regulatory web which blocks the way to long-term economic growth.
Sincerely,
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Member of Congress