[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 91 (Thursday, May 25, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3174-S3176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



         Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, we have a lot of issues we are working 
on right now. Some of the big ones include the budget conversation. For 
the first time in a long time, the budget conversation really circles 
around, how are we going to get back to balance? It is an interesting 
dialogue. There is going to be a lot of dispute about elements of the 
President's budget. There will be a lot of controversy back and forth 
about aspects in the House and the Senate proposals. But for the first 
time in a long time, the beginning point of the conversation is, how do 
we get back to balance? That is a good place to start. I am pleased to 
see that is a part of the conversation again.
  There are a tremendous number of things that have to be dealt with in 
this process. I want to bring up two quick ones and then talk about 
some of the small business issues we are facing.
  One of them is that when we go through the budget process, I 
encourage my colleagues to deal with the budget gimmicks that are still 
in place in the budget process--areas that seem to bring down the 
deficit but we all know actually do not. Those don't help us as 
Americans. That may help with some sort of scoring issues; that doesn't 
really help where we are.
  The second aspect to that is, let's actually put the appropriations 
bills on the floor. For the last several years, there have been 
continuing resolutions or omnibuses without any amendment process 
brought. We should be able to, in a bipartisan way, agree to bring 
these appropriations bills to the floor, actually have an amendment 
process, and actually deal with this in a public setting. There are 
straightforward ways to deal with our debt and deficit.

[[Page S3175]]

It begins with actually confronting debt and deficit in a way that will 
really matter.
  It is interesting as well that when we talk about a lot of the big 
issues, regulations often come up as one of the prime problems. 
Regulations are often big, expensive, and deal with a lot of 
controversy.
  Quite frankly, there are thousands of regulations out there that 
impact small businesses. For a small business, it is not typically just 
one regulation, it is the hundreds of little ones that they are 
constantly trying to live under. It is the culmination of all of these 
different regulations and trying to figure out where they are. Most 
small businesses don't have lawyers. They don't have compliance people. 
They don't have folks lined up to monitor all of these things. They 
have to try to figure it out as they go. They are small businesses. 
They are family-owned businesses. They are trying to take care of their 
own families and the neighbors around them. But all of these 
regulations come at them as well.
  Let me read what Karen Karrigan, the president and CEO of the Small 
Business and Entrepreneurship Council, wrote in an op-ed just last 
week. She wrote:

       Red tape is strangling our small businesses and undermining 
     entrepreneurship. Indeed, according to [Small Business and 
     Entrepreneurship] Council research, the cumulative loss of 
     new businesses over the last decade totals 3.42 million 
     missing businesses--

  Not workers--

     for America's economy. For existing small businesses, the 
     per-employee cost of regulation is just over $11,000. 
     Excessive regulation in the U.S. has hurt our competitiveness 
     in the global economy. The U.S. ranks No. 51 in the world for 
     ease of starting a business, according to the World Bank. 
     This same report is consistent with other global studies that 
     have found American's friendliness and general ``ease of 
     doing business'' has eroded year after year.

  That is according to Karen Karrigan, president and CEO of the Small 
Business and Entrepreneurship Council, in her op-ed last week.
  Each new regulation on small business adds another cost, another 
burden, another requirement that small businesses have to comply with. 
This cumulative burden is crushing small business.
  Let me give some examples. Julian Lumber Company is in Antlers, OK. 
You ought to come and see Antlers, OK. It is a beautiful area of our 
State. Julian Lumber Company, a family-owned business, makes wooden 
fence posts, treated poles. If you have a telephone pole in that area 
or other posts and poles, it often came from Julian Lumber Company. It 
also has a small trucking company to be able to haul posts to retail 
stores across the Midwest and the Southwest. Julian employs about 50 
people but recently had to shift a part-time employee who was doing 
compliance to full-time--doing nothing but compliance 40 hours a week 
because of all the Federal regulations. When Robert Julian funded this 
business in 1974, he didn't set out to just create jobs for a 
compliance officer, he actually set out to do lumber work, but 
unfortunately, now his business also includes Federal compliance.
  Small businesses are vital to our economy. Surely we can agree on 
that. They drive job creation and innovation. Excessive and poorly 
crafted government regulations disproportionately--the burden of them--
fall on small businesses and on their growth. If Julian Lumber has to 
hire more people to just do compliance, not lumber, there is a problem.
  Then there is Ander's Shoe Store in Miami, OK, which was founded in 
1930 by Joe Ander after he immigrated to Oklahoma from Poland. Today, 
Ander's Shoe Store is owned and operated by Joe's daughter, Dena Ander, 
who is 102 years old. She has worked at Ander's Shoe Store for 86 
years.
  My favorite quote ever from a small business owner came from her when 
she said, at 101, that her health is better than her help, and so she 
just keeps working.
  Dena Anders is not waking up every day and reading the Federal 
Register to find out what new Federal regulation came down. She is not 
trying to track through all the different compliance officers and 
attorneys that she would have to contact to try to figure out how to 
read a new Federal regulation that comes down. She is taking care of a 
shoe store in Miami, OK. She has two employees, but her shoe store has 
to live by the same regulations that a lot of large stores also have to 
live by.
  Every Member of this body--when they are home, they talk about small 
businesses and the importance of small businesses and how to help them 
succeed. I am asking, are we as a body willing to do what we said we 
were going to do back home? Ninety-seven percent of the businesses in 
my State of Oklahoma are small businesses. Lots of us make promises to 
these small businesses. It is time to fulfill them.
  Regulatory reform for even small businesses, for whatever reason, is 
becoming politicized. This is not a political, Republican-Democrat 
issue. Small business owners are not Republicans or Democrats; they are 
Americans. They are people, and this should not be a partisan issue. I 
would be willing to work with every Senator of any party to be able to 
get this done.
  I have introduced the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility 
Improvements Act. It has passed its way through committee. It is S. 
584. It does some simple things--things that should not be 
controversial.
  It closes loopholes in the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which became 
law in 1980. That bill was designed to help small businesses, but there 
are some loopholes in it, and the agencies are going around it.
  This is not a bill that I just came up with on my own; it is a bill 
that had been drafted in direct response to small businesses and small 
business leaders around the country. It has been discussed for a long 
time, but for whatever reason, it has never been passed. I want to run 
through a few things that it does.
  First, the agencies should account for the economic impact of 
regulations, especially on small business, and it should be the full 
economic impact. Agencies have this little caveat that they will do. 
They will say: Well, it is not a direct cost, it is an indirect cost on 
business. So they will put a new regulation on them and say: We are 
only going to count direct costs of the regulations, but we are not 
going to count anything indirect, such as electricity.
  If they put a Federal regulation down and a State entity is then 
required to create new regulations based on it, they won't count the 
State regulations based on it.
  If permitting from a different agency is required, they will say: 
Well, that is somebody else who does that.
  Well, if you are a small business, cost is cost is cost. The Federal 
Government plays this game of what is a direct and indirect cost to a 
business. A small business does not get to play that game, and they 
have to pay the bills for it.

  So it is a very simple thing for us to say: Include the costs. We try 
to get some clear language on it. An agency would have to consider 
``reasonably foreseeable impacts.'' So I get that you are not going to 
get every pencil in the process, but what is reasonably foreseeable, 
you should be able to anticipate that.
  Second, we require the IRS to actually listen to small businesses 
before they release IRS rules. So many hours are spent by every small 
business complying with IRS regulations and requirements. We would like 
to have the IRS actually engage with small businesses when they put out 
policy and guidance and say: How is this going to affect small 
businesses? How can they work this out to make sure it is as easy as 
possible for small business owners?
  Third, increase the transparency in the rulemaking process. Small 
businesses tell me that when they learn of new regulatory requirements, 
they are often blindsided. They had no idea the rule was even coming. 
In the rare instance when a small business owner speaks out to an 
agency, they are often confused when they see the final rule because it 
doesn't look at all like what they had recommended or had raised.
  Years ago, there was something created called SBRFIA panels. Only 
Washington, DC, comes up with a term like that. Small businesses were 
supposed to be able to engage with the Federal Government on designing 
how regulations would come out. But, again, the loopholes were so 
present in the law that the agencies were just going around them. We 
need to close that.
  As simple as it sounds, when an agency is creating a rule, don't you 
think

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they should call small businesses and say: How will this work at your 
place, or will it work at all?
  Fourth, let's deal with old rules. There are lots of regulations out 
there that are old, that become very complicated for small businesses 
to be able to maintain, and no one has ever gone back to look at them. 
Let's create a simple system so that when a rule comes out, it has to 
be reviewed within 10 years. That way, we have no rule that is 40, 50 
years old, and no one has even touched it or looked at it to make sure 
that it still works, No. 1, and that it is not overcomplicating the 
process.
  Finally, and here is something pretty straightforward, give first-
time forgiveness for paperwork violations. When small businesses have a 
paperwork violation, they have a paperwork violation. They are not 
trying to break the law. They are not trying to violate regulations. 
They missed one. Why don't we give first-time grace to small 
businesses? Now, I wouldn't say that if they are violating health and 
safety issues. Obviously those are things they should have already 
taken care of. But just paperwork things--we have so many small 
businesses that get a fine because they missed a piece of paperwork. 
Again, so many small businesses don't have compliance people tracking 
this stuff for them all the time, and occasionally they make a mistake. 
This is still a government that works for them. They don't work for the 
government.
  My simple recommendation is this: For small businesses, give them 
first-time paperwork forgiveness rather than a Federal compliance 
person showing up at their place with a fine. Let's be reasonable about 
this. That should be a simple, straightforward thing.
  Quite frankly, these are all things small business owners have asked 
for. These were things even in the Obama administration. The chief 
counsel for the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy--
this is what the Obama administration's small business advocate wanted. 
I don't understand how this could be a partisan issue. It is simple, 
straightforward, and clean. There is no hidden anything in the bill. It 
is trying to actually get regulatory relief and common sense back into 
the way we do regulations.
  Over 200 trade associations representing millions of small businesses 
have already written me in support of this bill from all over the 
country--not from Oklahoma, from all over the country.
  Many in this Chamber pride themselves on being the advocate for the 
little guy and standing up for small businesses. I would ask my 
colleagues if they are ready to actually put feet to those words. This 
is a straightforward way to do it. We talk about helping small 
businesses; let's actually do it. I ask my colleagues to be able to 
walk alongside of us and help us get this bill passed and get some 
regulatory relief.

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.