[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 182 (Wednesday, November 30, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H7989-H7993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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GOP FRESHMEN HOUR: THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL BUSINESS IN AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Marino). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs.
Ellmers) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
General Leave
Mrs. ELLMERS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert
extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from North Carolina?
There was no objection.
Mrs. ELLMERS. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight with my colleagues to
discuss the importance of small business in America.
Small businesses are our job creators in America, and we here in
Congress must do everything that we can to help them to be doing
exactly that in creating jobs in our country.
We're here to talk about these issues. We're here to talk about the
burdens that are on small business that remain intact that we can help
with. We must do everything we can because right now our small business
hands are tied. They are telling us over and over again that
regulations and the threat of taxation uncertainty continue to hold
them back from creating jobs, innovating, and investing in their own
companies.
With that, I yield to my colleague from Washington.
Ms. HERRERA BEUTLER. I thank the gentlelady for allowing me the time
to join her here today to talk about what this government can and
should be doing to help the private sector grow jobs. That's what we're
about. We want to help small businesses grow jobs.
This is a statistic most of us are familiar with. Close to two-thirds
of all new jobs come from small businesses. They are truly the backbone
of our economy. So what if this government started by saying, What can
we do to help you, not hurt you or impede your success?
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And that's what this Congress is going to be doing this week as we
consider the Regulatory Flexibility Act, H.R. 527. It's a bill that
strengthens existing law. It simply says a Federal rule is killing jobs
if a Federal agency is then required to find a rule that's less
burdensome. It's pretty cut and dried. It's something we should be
doing already, but we actually have to pass a bill to require it.
When the Federal agencies here in Washington, DC, issue one rule
after another, small businesses pay the price and our economy loses
jobs.
For instance, take Somarakis Vacuum Pumps in my neck of the woods in
southwest Washington, a business manufacturer. When I visit this
business, I see a thriving facility with people at work. They're
assembling products that help our economy grow. But Somarakis Vacuum
Pumps doesn't have a huge team of lawyers and business accountants to
handle the regulatory details. They actually need regulatory
specialists to navigate the maze of Federal rules. They don't have the
money; but, you know, they just might need it.
I actually brought the reason why I think they might need that. Mr.
Speaker, this is pretty heavy. This is actually the list of Federal
rules and regulations just for half of November. This doesn't even
represent the entire month. These books I have right here represent
about 2 weeks' worth of Federal regulations and rules that Somarakis
Vacuum Pumps has to navigate.
Let me show you, if I may, just the rules from the last 3 days--
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday--right here.
You know, part of the reason we're here today is to illustrate the
need to make it simpler and easier for small businesses to navigate
this Federal maze. I mean, this is ridiculous. This is Monday, this is
Tuesday, and this is Wednesday. Three days' worth of rules that
Somarakis Vacuum Pumps in southwest Washington is going to need help
navigating.
It shouldn't be this way, Mr. Speaker, which is why this week we're
working very hard, and we're going to pass a bill that says if these
rules and burdens--it puts the proof and the burden back on the
government. If these rules are too burdensome, the Federal Government
needs to find a better way to put forward its regulations.
Another rule that's really important is working its way through the
Environmental Protection Agency and the courts. It's called the Forest
Roads Rule. It's also very impactful to southwest Washington. It's
crippling in that it overturns 35 years of environmental policy and
would require a Federal permit on every single forest road. In essence,
you have to get the same Federal permit for a road through your
privately owned forestland that you would have to get for factories and
industrial sites. That's not necessary.
Let's consider the impacts on public land. According to the U.S.
Forest Service, it would require that agency alone 10 years to obtain
the 400,000 permits necessary for the roads on public lands. What would
that do to Rick Dunning, who owns a small tree farm in Clark County,
Washington? He's not the U.S. Forest Service. He doesn't have unlimited
lawyers and resources. He has to do this on his own.
That's what we're here tonight to do is to make it easier on these
small business owners to operate in our regions and grow our economy.
With that, I thank the gentlelady for the time to talk about my
support for the Regulatory Flexibility Act and for what we're doing to
help grow jobs in small businesses.
Mrs. ELLMERS. I will just echo my colleague's remarks by saying that,
according to the NFIB, compliance with environmental regulations costs
small businesses four times more than larger firms. Larger firms do
have the ability and employees in place to deal with these issues. Our
small businesses simply cannot afford to do business that way.
With that, I yield to my colleague from California.
Mr. DENHAM. Thank you for your leadership on this area.
I rise in support of H.R. 527. We can't afford any more of the
overregulation. Regulatory burdens from new rules just this year alone
have cost American taxpayers $93.2 billion. One study found that each
$1 million increase in the Federal regulatory budget costs 420 jobs.
Overregulation costs us jobs around the Nation.
Let me just speak from my own perspective.
Twelve years ago, I started Denham Plastics, something that my wife
and I borrowed an incredible amount of money to start a vision that we
had supporting the agriculture industry with a plastics company. It has
been a tough road to hoe as a small business owner. It certainly comes
at great risk to our family, but it was a vision that we had, that we
believed, that without any government intervention we can succeed in
not only creating new customers but new jobs.
But one regulation would have put us out of business--the government-
run health care. Just the 1099 provision alone, by having to report all
of our customers, by having to report all of our suppliers, would have
put our small business under.
From an agriculture perspective--I'm a farmer in the central valley.
The EPA came down with new dust control regulations.
Now, we farm. We drive tractors. We till our land, and we're going to
have dust. I mean, just by the sheer motion of a tractor driving
through a field or plowing through the dirt--it's something that we've
done through the history of our Nation--creates dust. But are you going
to put us out of business because of it?
We grow almonds. You can't spray the trees full of water before you
shake the trees and harvest the almonds. You're going to have dust.
So I've been a coauthor of a bill that gets rid of this burdensome
regulation, something that would shut down our agriculture industry,
not only in the central valley of California but across the Nation.
We're farmers. We are going to have dust.
Some of my fellow farmers and ranchers are also aware that EPA also
wanted to expand its regulation of manure as a threat of greenhouse
gas. I mean, some of these things are so ludicrous that they just cost
us millions of jobs, and the threat alone causes farmers to say, Do we
really want to be in this business? Do our kids really want to take
over the family farm?
We've got to stop this overregulation because it does cost us jobs.
We've got to stop eliminating jobs before we can actually go out and
create more jobs. We have to have certainty in the marketplace. And
whether you're a farmer or a small business owner, the regulations
affect us in such a way that, as a small business owner, I couldn't go
out there and hire a lobbyist to go through the 90,000 pages of new
regulations this year alone.
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We have to stop the regulations that are killing businesses
throughout the Nation. H.R. 527 is one way to do that. We need
flexibility. Most of all, we need certainty. We've got to be able to
plan our businesses, not for a month, not for 2 months, not for 1 year.
When you're in business, when you're out there borrowing capital, when
you're putting your home into a second mortgage because you want to
have the American Dream and create a business and want to go out and
hire new people, you have to have some certainty. I can't go to my wife
and say, Let's take a second out on our home, and maybe we might make
it next year.
With regulations, we don't know what's going to happen. We need to be
able to plan for 5 years, 10 years. We need to be able to plan on
putting our kids through college. Before I go out and hire a new
employee, I need to make a commitment to that employee that we're going
to have ongoing employment, and I need to make a commitment to that
employee's entire family, who depends on us for that new job.
So the regulations that are killing our businesses across the Nation
have to end. We need flexibility. We need certainty as a business. We
need it in order to create jobs in this great Nation.
Mrs. ELLMERS. I thank my colleague from California. Your perspective
alone, as a small business owner and as a farmer, really gives us that
strong idea of what we're really facing.
Many of us here in Washington now are and have been small business
owners, and we understand the burdens that we are having to undertake
and that the rest of America is dealing
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with. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to just talk a little bit about
some statistics and poll data.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, small business owners in the
United States say complying with government regulations is the most
important problem facing them today, followed by consumer confidence in
the economy and a lack of consumer demand. Small business firms bear a
regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee just to deal with the
regulations, which is 36 percent higher, there again, than larger
businesses. Small business is what drives our economy, yet it is what
is continuously targeted, and we must act on it with the bill that we
will pass tomorrow, H.R. 527.
I spoke a little bit about the excessive costs of dealing with
environmental regulations. According to the Small Business
Administration, regulations cost the American economy $1.7 trillion
annually, which is an enormous cost. You can see by our unemployment
rate why we continue in this. Until we are able to cut the excessive,
overbearing regulations that are facing our businesses, we will not
turn this economy around. That is why we must act now. That is why, of
the many bills we have passed over to the Senate, we repeatedly ask for
a vote so that we can get started. We could do this tomorrow if these
bills were voted on.
One last bit of information before I introduce my next colleague.
Of the administration's new regulations--``new'' regulations--200 are
expected to cost over $100 million each. Seven of those new regulations
will cost the economy more than $1 billion each. We cannot continue on
this path.
With that, I yield to my colleague from Illinois.
Mr. SCHILLING. I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for
inviting me to participate today.
The best thing about having the opportunity to represent the
residents of Illinois' 17th District is the ability to just listen to
their concerns and then taking those concerns back here to Washington,
D.C.
As I travel throughout the area, I listen, and I am also asked what
worries me. I worry about unemployment and about the uncertainty facing
our families in our district. I am worried that more is not being done
to create an environment of certainty that promotes long-term growth in
our jobs sector.
Government does not create jobs. We need to be clear about that.
Government creates an environment for job creation by the private
sector. Folks simply will not be put back to work if government
continues villainizing our job creators and enacting policies that keep
workers on the unemployment lines and drive us deeper into debt. As a
small business owner myself, I understand how this hinders the ability
to create jobs.
Back in August, I invited local business owners throughout our area
to participate in a business roundtable where we discussed what
government can do to empower the private sector, spur job creation, and
grow our economy. These business owners are the people we are asking to
lead us into economic recovery and to put Americans back to work.
I was pleased to see folks from all sorts of industries present eager
and great ideas and thoughts on issues that basically are causing them
to struggle in this economy. They shared with me that the high energy
costs, rising taxes, mixed messages from Washington, D.C., and the
uncertainty from the Illinois State government are stifling the
creation of an environment of economic success.
Now, there are more than 27 million small businesses throughout the
United States of America. They are the lifeblood of our Nation's
economy. America's small businesses create 7 out of every 10 new jobs,
and they employ over half the country's private-sector workforce. We
ought to be making it easier for these folks to grow and hire new
workers, not villainizing them or burdening them with a broken Tax
Code, unnecessary mandates, high energy costs, and uncertainty. We need
to tear down the roadblocks, get government out of the way and lay the
groundwork for real private-sector job creation.
Phil Nelson, president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, recently
testified before the Small Business Committee.
He said, ``What really keeps me lying awake at night is the potential
for more regulatory creep. It's as if we go to bed one night with one
set of regulations and wake up the next morning facing a new set. Every
moment that we spend fighting and then working to comply with needless,
duplicative regulations takes us away from what we do best--producing
food.''
My colleagues and I in the House have been focused on jobs since day
one--passing more than 20 jobs bills to give small businesses the
certainty they need to grow, increasing the domestic production of oil
and getting Americans back to work. Unfortunately, these bills remain
stuck in the Senate, but we cannot do it alone. The President and the
Senate Democrats must join us.
This week, we will be voting on H.R. 527, the Regulatory Flexibility
Improvements Act. This is yet another pro-jobs bill, one that helps
address the problem of burdensome, reckless regulations that burden
businesses and stunt job growth. The Regulatory Flexibility
Improvements Act provides urgently needed help to small businesses
facing an onslaught of Federal regulations. When considering
regulations, agencies frequently fail to consider alternative ways to
achieve the regulatory goals without imposing unnecessary burdens on
America's job creators. This bill increases the ability of small
businesses to provide input to Federal agencies as they consider
government regulations, and it gives the Small Business Administration
new authority to ensure agencies comply with a law that requires
flexibility in taking regulatory action against small business.
It takes President Obama's regulatory review Executive order one step
further, giving the Small Business Administration the ability to ensure
new regulations are in compliance with the law while verifying that
small businesses will be able to comply without hurting their ability
to create jobs.
Business owners need the certainty that government will get out of
the way so that they can do what they do best, which is to grow their
businesses and create jobs, and the American people need real
bipartisan solutions to our jobs crisis.
Let's put politics and partisanship aside and help the private sector
create the jobs that Americans throughout the country so desperately
need. The time has come to empower small businesses and to reduce
government barriers by helping our small businesses, by fixing the Tax
Code to help our job creators, by boosting competitiveness for American
manufacturers, by encouraging entrepreneurship and growth, by
maximizing American energy production, by paying down America's
unsustainable debt burden, and by starting to live within our means.
Mrs. ELLMERS. I thank my colleague from Illinois for that very
important information.
Again, as a small business owner, this information is vital to the
solutions that we're coming up with here in Washington. We're not just
Members of Congress who don't have the experience out there, and we
aren't just listening to the usual Washington bureaucrats.
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We are actually small business owners who deal with these real-life
experiences and understand what works and what doesn't, and this simply
is not working.
Mr. Speaker, in my district, where the unemployment rate hovers at
about 10.3 percent, I am hearing numerous stories highlighting how
small businesses are ``hanging on by a thread,'' and I say that in
quotes. ``Hanging on by a thread'' is what I hear. ``Over-regulation is
killing us,'' is another quote I hear over and over and over again.
They feel that they are being punished by Washington. They, years
ago, felt that their competitors were the ones that they were working
against and trying to compete with for a better product. Now they feel
that they are working against the Federal Government and the Federal
Government is working against them. The Federal Government has become
their enemy.
One of the local small businesses in my district is Kivett's
Incorporated in Clinton, North Carolina, owned and operated by Mr.
Jerol and Telia Kivett. They are wonderful people, and I met them when
I was actually running for
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office. Why? Because I needed to go in. They called for a meeting with
me because they were so concerned with where our country was going and
what was happening to their business.
They were not people who had been politically active, they were not
people who had ever sat down with a Member of Congress or a want-to-be
Member of Congress, but they felt trapped and continue to feel trapped
by the government regulations and all of the uncertainty, including the
President's health care bill, which they know will harm them greatly.
Kivett's Incorporated, is the largest family-owned and operated
church pew manufacturer and pew refinisher in the United States. In
addition, they build and refurbish other church furniture and fixtures,
such as steeples and stained glass windows and provide a full range of
services from delivery to installation.
This is a jewel in my district. So many are sending these jobs over
to China, and yet the Kivetts have maintained their business. Their
business was started by Jerol's father, I believe, back in the fifties.
They have spent their lives and dedicated their lives to their
business, and they are feeling that it is being pulled out from
underneath them.
Mr. Kivett's company had 160 employees in 2005, and they are now down
to 52--from 160 to 52. Their volume of business is down 60 percent.
Their business has not made a profit in the last 3 years. That is
significant. They have not increased the prices on their products
either since 2005.
This has been due to the fear of losing more business, even though
their costs, their costs for products, have escalated; but they have
tried to maintain their business by keeping their prices at the same
level. At one point they were averaging one church, church furniture
for one church every day, and are now down to approximately two per
week.
Mr. Speaker, how are they going to be able to keep their doors open
and keep those 52 remaining employees working? Churches depend on
charitable giving, and they are having a hard time finding a way to
meet their operating budget, which leaves any kind of future planning
completely out of the realm of possibility.
I spoke a moment ago about the health care law, the uncertainty it's
creating for small businesses. Owners make it harder for us to
determine--and this is coming straight from Mr. Kivett--it is making it
harder for us to determine what our costs are at a time when we are
struggling to meet the most basic cost of running our business.
As Mr. Kivett puts it, we are just trying to maintain and praying for
the government to stop attempting to regulate small businesses and
``get out of the way.'' That is another quote I hear over and over and
over again: ``Get out of the way.''
That's some of the gloom and doom that my business owners in my
district are faced with. As you heard tonight from some of my
colleagues, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Mr. Schilling
from Illinois showed you the card, the number of bills, again, that we
have passed in the House with bipartisan support to create jobs.
We keep hearing how America wants jobs. We keep hearing about the 99.
The 99 percent is sitting on the floor of the majority leader in the
Senate, because if those bills were passed and sent to the President to
be signed into law, we could have jobs created in this country. We need
to decrease the unemployment rate.
We can talk about cutting spending all day long, and we are all about
that, but until we get people back to work, we're not going to turn
this economy around. Again, there is a light at the end of the tunnel,
and you have heard us speak tonight about H.R. 527, which we will be
voting on tomorrow.
We simply cannot continue the one-size-fits-all regulations produced
by this administration which hinder our small businesses. This bill
will help alleviate needless burdens. Economic recovery begins with our
small businesses, but this will not happen unless we rein in the mass
of regulations coming from right here in Washington.
The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended by the Small
Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, requires Federal agencies
to assess the economic impact of their regulations on small business.
Imagine that, imagine having to run an economic impact study to find
out how much damage they will be doing to small businesses if these
regulations are put in place.
If the impact is significant, they must consider alternatives that
are less burdensome. However, the agencies have used loopholes to get
around this statute, and that is why it is so important that we pass
H.R. 527, the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011, which
would remove the loopholes and strengthen the flexibility act by
increasing the power of the office of the chief counsel for advocacy to
enforce the RFA, ensuring complete analysis of potential impacts on
small business and forcing agencies to perform better periodic review
of rules.
Regulations often impose unnecessary burdens on small business.
You've heard that over and over and over again tonight, that impede
their ability to create jobs. Agencies frequently fail to consider
appropriate alternatives that allow agencies to achieve their
regulatory objectives without imposing burdens on America's job
creators, our small business owners.
The Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, H.R. 527, provides
urgently needed help to small businesses facing an onslaught of Federal
regulations. It has been 15 years since Congress last updated the
Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980. During that time, we have seen that
there are weaknesses in the regulatory process that Federal agencies
have exploited to the detriment of small businesses and job creators.
This bill ensures Federal agencies can no longer ignore the RFA. Job
creators are the key to economic recovery and the small businesses are
America's job creators. Over-regulation requires the diversion of
scarce capital from job creation to regulatory compliance.
I said earlier, Mr. Speaker, North Carolina's unemployment rate is
now 10.4 percent. This is not a statistic; this is a catastrophe.
Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for this opportunity tonight.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Will the gentlelady yield?
Mrs. ELLMERS. I yield to my colleague from Iowa.
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Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from North Carolina for
yielding, and I especially thank her for leading in this Special Order
hour here tonight to discuss the burden of regulation on business in
this country, primarily the burden on small businesses in America.
From my standpoint and my background, I started a business in 1975. I
remember the fears I had at the time. I knew I could do the work and I
knew I could line up the customers. I believed I could turn a cash
flow, but I didn't know that I could comply with all government
regulations. And little did I know how much I was actually stepping
into.
When you begin to enter into a business, you are stepping into the
unknown. That unknown turned out to be that I would find out about a
government agent after a government agent, one after another. They
would show up. They'd send me a little mailer. They would talk to
someone else in my business. They would say: Did you meet this one? Did
you meet that regulation? Do you have your MSD requirements there? What
about the EPA side of this? Do you know you have to post a sign that
says that you're an equal opportunity employer. And by the way, that
has to be in multiple languages. And in case someone shows up that
doesn't speak that language, you may have another regulation to provide
that interpreter that's there.
On and on and on it went. More and more of my time went away from
producing goods and services that had a marketable value, and instead
it was invested in complying with primarily Federal but also State
regulations.
So as the years went by, I got better at it. I found out more and
more to comply with, and I got greater and greater frustration within
me because of this burden of filing reports, meeting deadlines, and
making sure that the government bureaucrats had all of their
regulations and all of the paperwork that they wanted, all the while,
``To what purpose?'' was my question, because much of that paperwork
that I was filling out was going off in some
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storage dungeon somewhere never to be seen again unless there was some
type of litigation or regulation enforcement against me, in which case
then I was confident that they would go dig it up out of the dungeon
and pull up that paperwork to see if I dotted the i's and crossed the
t's. But what good did it do? What good did most of that regulation do
if it simply was going to go off somewhere to go into storage so if,
God forbid we had an accident on the job site and OSHA would come in,
they would want to make sure that I had all of my regulations in place?
But that wouldn't make us more safe, the paperwork would not.
I made a comment here in the Judiciary Committee a month or so ago
that of all of these regulations that we have to comply with, if you
look across America, there are some really good companies in this
country. Of all of them, thousands and thousands of companies in
America, hundreds of thousands--actually, millions of companies in
America altogether. They advertise everything under the sun that you
can imagine. They have banners on their Web site. They will tell you
that they are the best or first at--you name anything it is you want.
Put it in the Google search. You'll find an American company that will
provide it for you, and they'll advertise their quality. They'll
advertise their personnel. They'll advertise the efficiency and the
cost. It will go on and on and on. But there isn't a single company in
America, not one, Mr. Speaker, that has a little banner on their Web
site that says, ``We are in compliance with all Federal regulations.''
Not one single company takes that position, and I'll tell you why:
because they know if they ever advertise that they are in compliance,
there would be a Federal bureaucrat that represented an agency, or two
or more, or up to 682, according to the Constitution Daily Web site,
Federal agencies--and those are subdepartments and divisions,
regulatory entities, 682 of them, and this count is about 5 years old,
by the way--that can levy sanction actions against American businesses.
And so the number one fear I had was: Can I comply with all of these
regulations? Can I identify them? Can I comply with them? And what do I
do about the conflicting regulations where, if you meet one regulation,
the other regulation contradicts it? You're bound to be in violation.
So today there isn't a single company in America that advertises that
they are in compliance with all Federal regulations. And if they did, I
think we should give them the Doo Dah of the Year Award for that
because they would be surrounded by bureaucrats, Federal regulators
that are in there to inspect, to make sure that they are completely in
compliance.
And, by the way, they have to justify their job. So I would predict
that any company that would announce that they are in compliance with
all Federal regulations probably wouldn't survive beyond about 18
months before they went into bankruptcy because they would be tied up
in knots and tied down and they couldn't produce those goods and
services that have a marketable value.
Now, there is a tradeoff on this always, and it doesn't mean that we
should not have wise regulations. Yes, we should. But they need to keep
in mind the regulatory burden of those rules and what it does to slow
down production.
Now, I've said goods and services that have a marketable valuable
both domestically and abroad. That means, if you run a company, you
want to go to work every day, and you look around, what do we do? We
produce a product. We manufacture and market a widget. And you want to
do that as efficiently as possible. So if you put 100 people out there
on the factory floor to manufacture widgets, and it doesn't take but
one person to run payroll and answer mail, you're in pretty good shape.
You've got one of those 100 people that's tied up doing administrative
duties, that's pretty good efficiency. That's 99 percent producing that
product, that number one, grade A widget that you're manufacturing and
perhaps invented.
But as soon as a bureaucrat comes along and says, Wait a minute. You
have to have somebody here that's documenting--let's say the water
that's coming in, the electricity that's coming in, the sewage that's
going out. You have to have safety inspectors and you have to have
safety meetings, so that once a week you line everybody up and spend 15
to 30 minutes telling them what they need to do, which is safe. Not a
bad idea, but when the government calls for that, they put more on your
overhead and they've shut down the production of that entire plant for
that period of time that they prescribe.
And the other regulations that come along in our construction
businesses, the Federal Government saying, let's see, you have to pay
the Federal Government scale for your equipment operators on
construction projects, Davis-Bacon wage scale. That really means union-
imposed scale on those projects. And it might change the wages. In the
past, I've seen them double or be cut in half, depending which
direction you're going. Just going across the highway, you go into a
different division and it's a whole different wage scale. The guy
running the shovel gets a different wage than the guy that's running
the grease gun, different from the guy that's running the machine
that's being greased or having the track scooped out on it. And I have
to keep track of all of that and do what the government tells me, which
means not just is it costly to keep track of it all, but it consumes
the efficiency on the project. It makes it difficult, if not
impossible.
Mrs. ELLMERS. I thank the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to take the opportunity to say in closing
that, as a small business owner with my husband back in Dunn, North
Carolina, with our surgical practice, that we have faced exactly what
my colleague is talking about, these excessive regulations that have
continued through the years.
We are at a point now where we are seeing our fellow colleagues back
home with medical practices closing their doors, being bought out by
hospitals because they just cannot and know they will not be able to
adhere to the mandates coming forward with the health care bill and all
of the uncertainty with the doc fix, SGR, all of those wonderful
things.
Mr. Speaker, we must act now. We can turn this economy around by
acting on these regulations, by passing these regulatory decreases for
our businesses so that, there again, our job creators can do what they
do best, reinvesting in this country and being the job creators that
they are.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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