Former Senator and Ag Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln says the Obama administration and Congress need to give farmers and other small business owners the certainty of less regulation.
Lincoln, who lost her reelection bid last year, is now with a DC law firm and has partnered with the National Federation of Independent Businesses to campaign for streamlining government regulations to help the economy and “protect jobs.” Lincoln – who comes from a farming family in Arkansas – says small businesses pay a disproportionate cost of regulation compliance, 364% more when compared to large businesses. She adds, “Farmers ARE the quintessential small businesses.” The name of the campaign is Small Business for Sensible Regulation.
Lincoln says reducing regulations will grow the economy, “We’ve talked about stimulus packages, we’ve talked about other things, and some of those things are fine and good. But, the best way is to empower them to use their own resources. And, the way you do that is to give them greater certainty and less ridiculous regulation.”
Lincoln says proposed new regulations would put heavy fines on farmers – with a lot of that coming from EPA “overreach.” Take proposed dust regulations, for example. Lincoln says she tried educating agency folks by taking them to farms and was amazed by their questions,“They would see a cotton farm after two weeks of no rain. And, they would be like ‘Oh my gosh, this is really dusty.’ Yeah, it’s really dusty down here!”
Lincoln says “to his credit”, President Obama is moving in the right direction calling for agencies to streamline regulations and root out those that are duplicated in other agencies. Lincoln says there are more than 300 EPA proposed rules and over 4-thousand across all agencies.
Lincoln urges farmers and other small business owners to go online to http://www.sensibleregulations.org/ and tell their stories.
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