FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 26^th, 2013 

Paulsen: Onerous Regulations Costing American Jobs & Innovation 

Questions Witnesses During Joint Economic Committee Hearing

WATCH Paulsen’s questioning during Wednesday’s Joint Economic Committee Hearing. 

Washington, D.C. – Representative Erik Paulsen (MN-03), member of the Ways and Means Committee and Joint Economic Committee (JEC), questioned witnesses during a JEC hearing entitled, “Reducing Unnecessary and Costly Red Tape through Smarter Regulations”. The bicameral, bipartisan committee heard from Dr. Robert Kieval, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Minnesota based medical device innovator, CVRx, Inc.

Remarks by Representative Paulsen

“I get a chance to tour a lot of Minnesota companies and Senator Klobuchar and I have been quite frequently visiting our medical device companies in particular. And a lot of these companies that we get the chance to tour - they’re small business, they’re manufactures. And so I’ve had the chance to talk with floor managers, the C-suite folks, as well as the business owners. And the issue about uncertainty and the increasing regulatory burden comes up frequently as a part of those conversations.”

“In fact there was a recent study that was just done, that the state of manufacturing in Minnesota. Sixty percent of businesses in manufacturing are very concerned about government policies and regulations, so it’s not just even concerning the tax side of the equation but it’s the regulatory environment. Having that fear of onerous regulation doesn’t create an environment that allows companies to invest with certainty in their people or their equipment.”

Remarks by Dr. Robert Kieval, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, CVRx, Inc., Minneapolis, MN

“These are part of the realities of what we are dealing with on a daily basis. And we, under the guidance of our Board of Directors and our Investors have to make these investment decisions very carefully about whether to pursue products in the U.S. or outside the U.S. We’ve been able to garner our leadership position by attracting top talent and retaining top talent with high paying jobs, and investing heavily in ongoing innovation and expansion and manufacturing capabilities, and with the time and amount of capital required to get our products across the approval threshold in the U.S., there’s just less money to devote to those value add activities.” 

“On top of that the medical device tax is going to continue to divert precious capital away from ongoing innovation and us jobs. I think insuring that the agreements under Medufa are met and I think we all expect clinical as well as economic benefits to come out of those, but as we’ve talked about I think repealing the medical device tax would also go a long way towards freeing up the greatly needed capital to help us maintain our leadership position.”

Paulsen, a champion of small business and advocate of free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and innovation, serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, and is co-chair of the Congressional Medical Technology Caucus.

For more information on Rep. Paulsen’s work in Congress visit www.paulsen.house.gov.

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