Harry Reid says regulations aren't harming our economy
By Neal Boortz
Harry Reid is a Democrat, therefore he believes that America’s greatness comes from government. It is because of this belief that he has been rendered incapable of comprehending why anyone would want LESS government in their lives. The fact that conservatives want less government regulations puzzles him to the extreme.
It is my belief that the majority of government regulations are created by someone merely trying to prove that they somehow belong on the payroll of a regulatory institution. Every once in a while they have to crawl out of their cubicle in some government building in DC and march to their supervisor’s office with some grand new regulation that will save hundreds of thousands of lives or bring some private sector miscreant under control
Remember this statistic: If the federal government's regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald's, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined. Also consider the fact that regulatory agencies have seen their budget increase 16% since 2008 and employment has increased 13% … at a time when our economy can barely grow at 4% and private sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.
This is all leading somewhere .. hang with me .. so we have …
- Regulatory agencies growing at a time when our economy is shrinking.
- An enormous number of regulators compared to workers at some of the largest private companies in the country.
- Small business owners saying that complying with government regulations is the most important problem facing them today.
- The total regulatory costs in our economy amount to about $1.75 trillion a year.
And that brings me back to Harry Reid. On the floor of the Senate he said the following:
“My Republican friends are yet to bring a single piece of evidence that the regulations they hate so much have the economic harm they claim. That’s because there isn’t any."
Oh really? Earth to Harry!
Allow me to present you with a few facts …
I’ve already told you that complying with government regulations costs our economy $1.75 trillion A YEAR. This means that the costs due to regulation are twice as high as all of the individual income taxes collected every year by our federal government. That is a huge albatross around the neck of productive Americans.
Think about this … think about how difficult it has been for this Supercommittee to come up with $1.2 trillion over ten years! We are spending more than that every year just to comply with government regulations. And you don’t think that this harms our economy?
Small businesses have said that regulations are their top concern … you don’t think that that is affecting their business decisions, their investing decisions, their hiring decisions, their spending decisions? You bet it is! My friend Bernie Marcus, one of the founders of Home Depot, has told me on repeated occasions that replicating the Home Depot miracle now would be impossible – couldn’t be done. Why? Trial lawyers and government regulations. Think about that.
If Harry Reid wants an example of how much economic harm these regulations have done, just look around! Regulations are essentially hidden taxes because these costs are eventually passed down to the customer in the form of higher prices and limited choices. Time is money, and time wasted complying with government regulations is time and money that is not being used productively. The economy suffers.
And guess what? It is only going to get worse. I’ve already told you how regulatory agencies have grown since 2008. The Obama administration is putting these agencies to work. According to the Heritage Foundation, “From the beginning of the Obama Administration to mid-fiscal year (FY) 2011, regulators have imposed $38 billion in new costs on the American people, more than any comparable period on record.”
If you need any more proof that these federal regulations are crippling this nation, you can read some of these fun and fact-filled archives from Nealz Nuze:
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