Authors: Carmen Cox
United States Senate(WASHINGTON) -- In this week's Republican address, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey acknowledges President Obama "inherited a weak economy," but says things only worsened since the president took office.
"Today, fewer people are working; gas prices are higher; home values are lower; wages are weaker; healthcare is more expensive; taxes are heading higher and out federal deficits are much larger than when President Obama took office," Sen. Toomey says.
Toomey claims that a big part of the problem hindering U.S. economic growth "has been job-killing regulations."
The senator says regulations and higher costs are keeping employers from wanting to expand and hire more workers. He continues by giving examples of such "burdensome" regulations.
"For example, it can sometime take years for a new life-saving medical device to be approved by the FDA. A hot dog factory can wait months for federal regulators to approve food product labels, throwing their entire production schedule off," he says. "Future investment in broadband networks has been jeopardized by burdensome new Internet regulations adopted by the FCC. New financial services mandates are raising the cost of credit. And the National Labor Relations Board is now dictating to companies where they can locate new plants."
Toomey says the number of these types of regulations have increased since the president began his term.
But Toomey says he remains optimistic about the future for Americans. He says that if government gets out of the way and lets it happen, Americans will build more factories, start businesses, hire workers and produce more goods and inventions.
While Toomey, who has just been appointed to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, says he believes some regulatory measures are necessary to keep us safe, they should be enacted "with a careful consideration to the impact they have on jobs."
With this in mind, Toomey presents the Employer Impact Act, introduced by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that would require federal agencies to consider the number of jobs to be lost as the result of a proposed regulation. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has also introduced a bill that would place a moratorium on federal regulations with an economic impact exceeding $100 million until unemployment falls below 7.7 percent.
Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio
