WASHINGTON – This week, House Committee on Small Business Chairman Steve Chabot (R-OH) wrote an op-ed with House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Senate Small Business Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) and Senator James Lankford (R-OK) for The Hill on how Congress should do more when considering how regulations affect small businesses:

Every day, millions of American small business owners and their employees work hard to develop products, provide services, and create jobs that grow our economy. They are mom-and-pop stores, restaurants, tech startups, family farms, manufacturers, and distributors—they are our nation’s entrepreneurs. They are hardworking Americans. And they continue to work hard, even while navigating a tangled web of complex and costly regulations. 

We are encouraged by the Administration’s efforts to ease this burden, including an Executive Order requiring the cost of any one new regulation to be offset by the removal of at least two existing regulations. However, it is Congress, and not the Executive Branch, that has the opportunity—and the obligation—to provide real, meaningful, and permanent regulatory relief for small businesses. They certainly don’t need or want another do-nothing bill or press release that pays lip service without delivering actual change. They need regulatory reform—reform which ensures regulators in future administrations actually listen to and take seriously the concerns of America’s small businesses.

Some of us in Congress are listening. During a House Small Business Committee hearing in September, one witness, Philip Howard, who testified on behalf of Common Good, a non-partisan coalition that focuses on simplifying government, told the Committee about one specific regulation bogging down small businesses: “Worker safety. For example, we literally have thousands of rules telling people helpful things like stairwell shall be lit by artificial or natural light.  How else can they be lit?”  Howard concluded, “These things have almost nothing to do with what makes the workplace safe.”

Small businesses need real regulatory reform like H.R. 33, the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, which passed the House as part of a larger regulatory reform package on January 11, 2017, and the Senate companion, S. 584, which passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 17, 2017.

That is why our Senate Democrat colleagues need to put aside their partisanship and support this bill.

Read the full article from The Hill HERE.