Ehrlich in Washington column, April 16, 1995

EHRLICH ON WASHINGTON By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. WEEK OF APRIL 16, 1995 UNNECESSARY REGULATIONS HURT BUSINESS During my campaign for Congress, I spent a great deal of time walking through strip malls, meeting and talking with small businessmen and shopkeepers. I introduced myself as someone who might soon be in a position to help them, and I asked them to tell me their most important issue. Almost all of them gave me the same answer. . .overregulation. Since the 1960s, the number of federal regulations has skyrocketed-the result of a slew of well-intentioned environmental, worker safety, and consumer protection laws originally enacted by Congress during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. Many of the regulations promulgated over the past thirty years were necessary to safeguard public health and safety. Others have, in practice, done little more than saddle business with additional costs, create mountains of unnecessary paperwork, and impose unnecessary and illogical mandates. In recent years, the regulatory landscape encountered by business seems only to have steepened. The number of pages in the Federal Register, the publication in which new regulations are listed, reached 64,914 in 1994, the most since Jimmy Carter was President. Federal regulatory agencies now employ a record 131,412 people at an annual cost of $1 1.9 billion. Do we really need all this centralized bureaucratic control from Washington? Overregulation takes a terrible economic toll. I have seen that it kills jobs, drives companies overseas, and usurps the private property rights of individuals right here in the Second Congressional District. This is why I have chosen to make regulatory reform my top priority as a Member of Congress.