Ag Minute and Rep. Roby: Where Are the Jobs?

The Ag Minute: Where Are the Jobs?
At Obama's Regulatory Agencies
WASHINGTON – This week during The Ag Minute, guest host Rep. Martha Roby discusses the disparity between job growth in Obama's regulatory agencies and the private sector. While taxpayers will spend more than $54 billion to support government regulators in 2011, the true cost to our economy is much greater. The American Action Forum estimates that since the beginning of this year, the Obama administration has imposed more than 47.2 million annual paperwork burden hours and $65 billion in compliance costs on businesses across the country. Rep. Roby explains that additional regulatory burdens impact the livelihoods of farmers, ranchers, and smalls businesses in rural America.


"The Obama administration can count one area of job growth as a success: the regulation business is thriving.
"While the national unemployment rate stagnates over 9 percent, employment at regulatory agencies has grown 13 percent.
"This reality isn’t surprising to farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods are threatened by the aggressive regulatory agenda of this administration.
"Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has led a non-stop regulatory assault on rural America attempting to regulate everything from crop protection tools to methane from cows.
"Currently, the EPA has more than 300 regulations under consideration impacting everything from farm dust to carbon dioxide emissions from farms, schools, and hospitals.
"The cost of overregulation is real jobs to grow our economy.
"By 2014, heightened EPA regulations will cost the nation between 476,000 to 1,400,000 jobs and $47 billion to $141 billion in GDP, according to the American Council for Capital Formation.
"If the Obama administration is serious about getting our economy back on track and creating jobs, it should stop the job-destroying overreach of the EPA."
The Ag Minute is Chairman Lucas's weekly radio address that is released from the House Agriculture Committee.