Oversight and Government Reform

I strongly believe that Congress should work to encourage private sector job growth, and not hinder it with unreasonable regulations.  We risk losing more scarce jobs and more investment capital every single day due to the ever-increasing intrusions of our Federal bureaucracy.  Many of these regulations place significant burdens on manufacturers and small businesses at a time when our economy can least sustain them.  According to the Small Business Administration, Federal regulations cost American businesses between $8,000 and $10,000 per year per employee and between $15,000 and $37,000 per American household each year.

I am an original cosponsor of the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. The REINS Act would require any major regulation—a rule or regulation with an economic impact of $100 million or more as scored by the Office of Management and Budget—from the executive branch to come before Congress for an up-or-down vote before it could be enacted.

A recent study in the Wall Street Journal by Wayne Crews shows the incredible financial burden being placed on our economy, businesses, and individual households through new federal regulations from the Obama administration.

"For two decades, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has tracked the growth of new federal regulations. In his 20th anniversary edition this week, he'll report that pages in the Code of Federal Regulations hit an all-time high of 174,545 in 2012, an increase of more than 21% during the last decade.

"Relying largely on government data, Mr. Crews estimates that in 2012 the cost of federal rules exceeded $1.8 trillion, roughly equal to the GDP of Canada. These costs are embedded in nearly everything Americans buy. Mr. Crews calculates these costs at $14,768 per household, meaning that red tape is now the second largest item in the typical family budget after housing."

The REINS Act successfully passed the House in January of 2017 and is currently awaiting action in the Senate.