Regulatory reform: A necessity for small business growth

As our nation struggles to fully recover from the Great Recession, the questions on every American’s mind are, “How did we end up in this situation?” and “Where do we go from here?”

Although the answers to the first question vary widely, there are solutions supported by both sides of the aisle that would help America’s small businesses grow and create the jobs needed for recovery.

Each year, small businesses create more than two-thirds of the new jobs across the U.S. Imagine how much more they could do if we reduced the heavy regulatory burden weighing them down.

As it stands, there are currently more than 700 regulations that impact small businesses — and that only accounts for federal regulations. Each of those regulations requires the attention of the business owner, consuming time that would have been spent growing his or her business, instead wasting business hours on complying with burdensome regulations. With so many hoops to jump through, it’s no wonder many small business owners have put their plans to expand on hold.

And unless we implement regulatory reform soon, the situation is going to get worse. Small businesses are already expected to follow an alarming number of duplicative regulations, and there are another 3,000-plus new regulations slated for implementation if we don't take action.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are several fairly simple proposals that would reduce the burden federal regulations have on small businesses and ensure that future regulations are easier for small businesses to comply with. Even better, these are reforms that already have significant bipartisan support.

We need to be evaluating each and every one of these proposed regulations in terms of not only what problem they are seeking to fix, but also in terms of what problems they create. Small business owners have very little opportunity to vet the very regulations that directly impact their day-to-day activities. The result is often duplicative regulations with costs that vastly outweigh the benefits.

The most effective way to break down these barriers to small business success is to have an open and transparent process for evaluating regulations, and to give them a better seat at the table.

As it stands, too many of the regulations affecting businesses are based not on data and results, but on political rhetoric and social agendas. By putting in place a data-driven process to analyze regulatory effectiveness, we can more accurately gauge the impacts of pending regulatory proposals and determine whether or not the benefits truly outweigh the costs. And if they don’t — then we are better off without them.

With the majority of economic growth in our country rooted in small business, regulatory reform needs to be at the top of the to-do list for our elected officials. Support for comprehensive regulatory reform is growing, and it should be a priority for Montana’s Congressional delegation as well.

Rep. David "Doc" Moore, R-Missoula, represents House District 91. He is a member of the House Business and Labor committee, Federal Relations, Energy, and Telecommunications committee, and the Local Government committee.