Regulations Crush Pennsylvania Employers
By Scott Wagner
By every measure, Pennsylvania’s economy is lagging behind other states. People are struggling to find good-paying jobs, our young people are leaving for better opportunities, and industry is floundering.
Pennsylvania’s number one roadblock are the crushing government regulations and restrictions on Pennsylvania’s job providers.
When I started my first waste company in 1985, there were five regulations we had to comply with. We kept them in a single manila folder.
Fast forward to 2017, there are almost 100 regulations that we have to comply with, and these are just transportation regulations. What I once kept in a flat manila folder, we now keep in a three and a half-inch thick binder.
There are several other binders of regulations that are in our human resources department that we must comply with just to employ people.
Government regulations are crushing businesses, jobs, and wage levels.
This past week I had an opportunity to meet three experts from the Mercatus Center, which is associated with George Mason University.
They gave me a policy brief, which was titled A Snapshot of Pennsylvania Regulation in 2017.
To put in perspective the rules and restrictions Pennsylvania businesses are forced to navigate, consider the following statements contained in the brief:
It would take an ordinary person almost three years to read the entire code of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) which contained over 103 million words in 2012.
The sheer size of the CFR poses a problem not just for the individuals and businesses that want to stay in compliance with the law, but also for anyone interested in understanding the consequences of this massive system of rules.
The Pennsylvania Code contains 153,661 restrictions, or roughly 12.8 million words. It would take an individual about 713 hours – or just under 18 weeks – to read the entire Pennsylvania Code. That’s assuming the reader spends 40 hours per week reading and reads at a rate of 300 words per minute.
In 2016, there were over 1.08 million additional restrictions in the federal code.
This business-restrictive environment is putting Pennsylvania out of business and it’s time for Pennsylvanians to wake up and realize how these regulations and restrictions are affecting their daily lives, their families, and the companies they work for.
I joined the Pennsylvania State Senate for this very reason. I was fed up with the non-stop pile on of regulations and restrictions created mainly by state and federal lawyers working in various government agencies.
In Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Resources has approximately seventy-five, in house attorneys who write regulations each and every day that impact Pennsylvania businesses – and YOU.
Some regulations and restrictions are necessary, but Pennsylvania does not need 153,661 restrictions that contain 12.8 million words.
It’s madness and it has to stop.
That is why I’m running to be the next Governor of Pennsylvania. I am the only candidate who has real life experience dealing with all of the federal and state regulations.
The time is now for all of us to wake up to the fact that the Pennsylvania’s economy will not grow and good income producing jobs will not materialize.
Our hopes and dreams of prosperity will continue to die a slow, painful death unless we stop the regulation madness.
As the next Governor of Pennsylvania, my administration will immediately stop new regulations until we review each and every regulation currently on the books.
I can assure that Republican House and Senate members will act with a sense of urgency to roll back regulations, and if I have to, I will use executive orders to roll back regulations as Governor.
Sen. Wagner represents the 28th District in the Pennsylvania Senate.
Regulations Crush Pennsylvania Employers
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