The Tennessean - It's Time to Unburden Business Owners of Federal Regulations

Op-Ed

By Representative Darrell Issa and Representative Scott DesJarlais

It has been said before and it remains true: Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Yet the Obama administration continues to bury American job creators with more and more red tape, and businesses are struggling to keep up.

We cannot continue to suffocate our nation's business owners and entrepreneurs with excessive and poorly constructed rules. It is time for businesses to grow, hire and contribute to a healthy economy.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, "regulations and red tape" is the "single most important problem" for small businesses. To narrow down what needs to be fixed, we launched the American Job Creators platform last year to hear directly from job creators.

Thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs responded about how new government rules are costing good, private-sector jobs, leading House Republicans to pass 27 bipartisan bills to reduce job-killing rules for struggling businesses.

There is much more to be done. In the past three years, the administration has added 106 new major regulations, costing businesses more than $46 billion annually, according to the Heritage Foundation. This doesn't include the hundreds of proposed rules in the pipeline, thanks in part to the Dodd-Frank Act and the Affordable Care Act.

It has been made clear that job creators want government out of the way. They need more certainty from the federal government so that they can hire new employees and invest in the future of their businesses with confidence. However, when small businesses have to pay an average of $10,585 per employee to comply with regulations, the status quo is unsustainable.

Increasing the federal regulatory agenda is the last thing job creators and business owners need.

This has led us to Murfreesboro where, in a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform public field hearing on Monday, local job creators will share how state and federal policies affect their businesses.

Tennessee job creators continue to struggle with the uncertainty of federal regulations and overzealous regulators, yet the state's unemployment rate currently sits at about 7.8 percent, lower than the 8.2 percent national average. So what are Tennessee elected officials doing to lower unemployment and create jobs?

Gov. Bill Haslam, Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Bob Corker and Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty will also join us on Monday to share how state policies positively affect Tennesseans. We will take their stories and recommendations back to Washington so that Congress can better understand how to deliver regulatory relief.

The field hearing will take place June 18 at 9 a.m. at MTSU's Business and Aerospace Building, 1301 East Main St.

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