The Washington Post highlighted Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America call for necessary regulatory reform.
And in its 51-page comment, “Make Federal Agencies Responsible Again,” the Associated General Contractors of America recommended repealing 11 of President Barack Obama’s executive orders and memorandums, including one establishing paid sick leave for government contractors.
In “Make Federal Agencies Responsible Again,” AGC has produced a a regulatory, compliance, and enforcement plan to help build infrastructure, encourage job growth, and cut red tape.
With a new administration in power, AGC believes that it is time to make federal agencies responsible again. The regulatory onslaught of the past eight years—on top of decades of existing regulatory regimes—has exacted a toll on the ability of construction contractors to hire new employees, remain competitive, and continue to innovate and build the nation’s civil and social infrastructure.
For every perceived problem, many federal agencies have sought regulatory “solutions.” Oftentimes, those solutions fail to adequately—let alone comprehensively—solve the alleged ills they seek to address. Instead, a new regulation is generally stacked on top of a host of existing regulatory requirements without sufficient consideration of its overall impact on the greater regulatory compliance and enforcement scheme. The result is a chaotic patchwork of federal mandates that often create considerable economic hardship on the construction industry—especially small businesses—amounting to fewer construction projects built and fewer construction jobs available.
There are a variety of studies that detail the draconian impact of this federal regulatory pattern. Some of these studies have found that federal regulatory compliance costs reached $1.885 trillion in 2015. To put this in perspective, regulatory compliance costs exceed the $1.882 trillion that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is expected to collect in both individual and corporate income taxes from 2015.
In this plan, AGC puts forth a range of options the new administration should consider when addressing the regulatory challenges our nation’s construction industry, infrastructure, and economy face. In addition, AGC puts forth a set of specific recommendations concerning the litany of executive orders, presidential memoranda, rules, guidance, and policy statements issued during the Obama administration that the Trump administration should repeal, tweak or keep.