John Mica: “Mr. Speaker, small business is really the largest employer in our country. Small business in fact is the cornerstone of…”

“Mr. Speaker, small business is really the largest employer in our country. Small business in fact is the cornerstone of free enterprise. Today small business in the United States is being choked to death on mindless regulations, edicts and paperwork, and federally mandated compliance forms. When they write the epitaph of American small business, let me read for you what the tombstone is going to say: ``Here lies American small business, murdered by overregulation, murdered by taxation and litigation.'' Today we cannot totally free the bondage of small business in America. What we can do today, however, is allow some regulatory flexibility, and that is what this legislation does. Today, through this legislation, small business will have a small but a fighting chance to challenge this crazy Federal bureaucratic rulemaking process. Today we can let Congress place a small check on the bureaucrats who have made a lifetime career of pumping out mindless, costly, and ineffective regulations. Today, if we are going to sink our Nation further into the rathole of debt, we can, through these regulatory reform measures, give small business, who employ our people, who pay our taxes, a small but fighting chance to dig us out of that rathole of debt.”