In late August, 2011, after they ignored jobs for the four years Democrats controlled Congress, I finally heard the professional left ask “Where are the Jobs?!”  While the leftists are coming to the jobs party a little late, everybody else has been asking the same question for YEARS.  

Simple answer: American jobs have disappeared under a mountain of debt and a haze of job-killing red tape.  

In the next few months, I'll post several articles on my blog about jobs, the debt, and solutions to both.  In this article, I'll focus on the relationship between jobs and government regulation.  

Just so you know, I support REASONABLE regulations.  Our economy needs ground rules to function.  Businesses need a clear set of guidelines; the financial system needs enforced boundaries.    We all want a clean environment, common sense rights for workers, and an effective relationship between government and the governed.  But that’s not what we’ve got.

Red Tape Run Amok.

In the past 10 years, as the size of the government has grown, job killing new regulations and red tape of every kind have exploded.  Unfortunately, in many cases policies rejected by the electorate and Congress are implemented by stealth through federal bureaucracies.  

The federal government has been on a regulation binge of epic proportion.  In his term, President Bush implemented $60 billion in new regulations.  In the first 26 months of President Obama’s term, 75 new major regulations have been implemented.  And the rate of new red tape is increasing.  

In the next five years, thousands of new regulations are coming down the pike from the Dodd-Frank Big Bank Protection Act (not it’s real name, but surely its effect! ), Obamacare, the FCC, the FDA, the FLRB, the EPA, and every other agency.  That's why job growth for new bureaucrats is booming.

Each and every one of the regulations imposed by new bureaucrats creates an additional burden on business and additional costs onto a reeling economy.   And unfortunately, in too many regulatory areas, we’ve passed the point of diminishing returns – the point at which the cost of new regulation far outweighs the new benefit.  We’re definitely in the gilding the lily stage.   

For example, consider the EPA’s new rules on Coal.   Originally passed in 1963, the Clean Air Act provided huge improvements to our quality of life for modest investments.  Now, the new EPA rules – which a Democrat Congress refused to pass – will kill 1.4 million jobs and increase electricity rates by an average of 23%.   A worthy goal?  Perhaps, but the Democrat-led Congress didn’t seem to think so.  Regardless, we can’t afford the lost jobs and hit to the economy.

The Job Situation Today.

As of July, 2011, the official unemployment rate is listed at 9.1% by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – but to get there they had to claim that 193,000 people left the workforce in July alone.  I find that number really hard to believe.  The more realistic view of unemployment is the percentage of Americans actually working. 

In July, the “Labor Force Participation Rate” dropped to the lowest point since January 1984 – only 63.9% of Americans are working.  The drop has been sudden and steep.  So where have the jobs gone? 

The Impact on Jobs?

I talk with lots of business owners, managers, and regular folks just trying to earn a paycheck.  Without exaggeration, everybody is worried about what’s going to happen next.  Uncertainty is a huge driver of our current difficulties and causes consumers to panic, companies to retreat, and investors to sit on their wallets.

And boy, do we have uncertainty in abundance!  And it’s worst for business.  Just trying to stay open in a bad economy, employers see an endless parade of unelected bureaucrats telling them what to do and how to do it.  The employers, experts in their own businesses, see expenses – unrelated to their core business activities – increasing and out of control.  

In the face of uncertainty, the employers try to maintain.  They minimize costs; they don’t invest, they don’t expand, they cut back, and many move operations to more business friendly places.  

They move to places like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Taiwan.  And Americans see our places of work close, our communities shrink, and jobs disappear.  Meanwhile, we’re forced to train our overseas replacements.

Solutions.

Reducing bureaucratic regulations – unnecessary and counterproductive red tape - is an intuitively good idea with broad appeal across America.  Inside the beltway, however, not so much.  In Washington DC, they’re expert at regulation – and the more the better.  For them, it’s job security.  For us, it’s a job killer.

We’ve got to get rid of existing red tape, limit new red tape, and increase predictability for business, while maintaining effective ground rules for country.  We need to bring the unelected bureaucrats under the control of our elected representatives. 

How?  

1. Roll Back Existing Red Tape: 
   • evaluate existing federal regulations for efficacy, and make recommendations to repeal ineffective, inefficient, and overly expensive red-tape through immediate agency action, or legislatively through appropriations if necessary;
2. Limit NEW Red Tape in Legislation:
   • require every new bill be reviewed and scored for regulatory impact and effectiveness;
   • require sunset dates for all federal regulations;
3. Limit Unelected Bureaucrats’ Power to Create Red Tape
   • require Congressional approval of new major rules promoted by Federal Agencies.  We need an effective check on elected officials on unaccountable bureaucrats. 

By reducing old, outmoded, ineffective, and cost prohibitive regulatory red tape, we can increase confidence in the United States, free up money now wasted, and convince the world that the United States is once again the best place in the world to do business.  And that WILL grow jobs and investment right here, right now.