Late summer and early fall should be a “safe” time for America’s small business owners. By “safe” I mean protected from cumbersome, expensive new laws and taxes.
You see, this time of year , particularly in an election year , Congress is slowing down, focusing on campaigning and wrapping up their legislative session as quickly as they can. They aren’t spending much time thinking of new ways to tax or control private businesses.
However, before you get your hopes up … it turns out this season can be very bad for small business when it is the end of a presidential term. When the clock is running out for a presidential administration, regulatory agencies tend to crank out new regulations at a record pace, often before they’ve had time to fully study the cost and impact of these new requirements on the business community.
In Washington, D.C., they call this “midnight regulation.” The term was coined in 1981 during the final weeks of the Carter administration when federal regulators were “burning the midnight oil” because they had so many new regulations to publish.
Not Safe Yet
It is a trend that knows no partisan boundaries: according to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the volume of regulation jumped, on average, almost 25 percent in the last quarter of the past nine presidential administrations, compared with those same months in the administrations’ non-election years.
So if you are a small business owner, don’t breathe that sigh of relief yet, even if Congress is winding down and wrapping up. Because agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency are working at breakneck speed to leave the mark of the Clinton administration on America’s regulatory landscape.
Scared? You should be. Two of the regulations that OSHA will be working to rush through the system could prove to be the most expensive , in terms of money and time , that the small business community has ever seen.
One is a regulation on ergonomics (a scientific word for changing the work to fit the person instead of asking the person to fit the work). This regulation would force employers to create OSHA-safe workplaces and would hold employers responsible for preventing any injury brought on by repetitive motion , from scooping ice cream to lifting boxes to bending over to pick up babies in day-care centers!
The special bonus rule that comes tied to this “ergo-nonsense” regulation is an OSHA recording and reporting requirement that would require employers to record worker ailments (from muscle aches to rashes) whether or not the ailments have been incurred as a result of their jobs. So ergonomics and reporting would come together, like a twisted two-for-one sale. Except this sale costs more than the regular price.
No Funding
Both chambers of the United States Congress have voted to not fund the ergonomics regulation until it undergoes a more complete cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately, if OSHA administrator Charles Jeffress gets his regulation to the president’s desk before Congress can get their bill there, the congressional action doesn’t make any difference.
As we all head to the polls this November, please ask yourself: is this rush-to-regulation what our Founding Fathers intended governance to be? I think not. This shocking trend of abusing our regulatory system in order to exert more government control over America’s family businesses must stop. This should be one of the first messages we, as a people, impart to our new leader in the White House next year.
Faris is president of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
