William Helms: “the pending bill, S. 942, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, deserves the support of all…”

“the pending bill, S. 942, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, deserves the support of all Senators--and the able chairman of the Small Business Committee, our good friend from Missouri, Mr. Bond, is to be commended for his persistence. This legislation is badly needed. In North Carolina literally hundreds of small businesses are struggling under the heavy regulatory burdens imposed by the Washington bureaucracy. These businesses are seeing their profit margins gobbled up by oppressive Federal regulations. Mr. President, S. 942, will go a long way toward leveling the playing field and giving small businesses some long overdue relief from a portion of existing burdensome regulations. Small businesses now will be better able to challenge burdensome regulations in the courts. Federal agencies hereafter will be required to obtain the views and opinions of small businesses before regulations are drafted, making small businesses players before regulations are drafted and imposed. Mr. President, Mary McCarthy in the October 18, 1958, New Yorker Magazine observed, ``Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.'' How true, and I'm hopeful that both the Senate and the House will pass this legislation, and that the President will sign it, because no bureaucracy or bureaucrat should be permitted to be a despot over the people they are supposed to be serving.”