Andy Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, Inc., which operates the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurant brands.
Like so much in American politics, the debate over “regulation” too often focuses on the highest-profile examples with the biggest price tags and the loudest opponents. So, when it comes to environmental regulation of coal-fired power plants, or bans on off-shore drilling, or new rules for Wall Street banks, there is no shortage of coverage or complaint.
Those regulations deserve the attention they receive—indeed, they are among the most damaging government actions standing in the way of American businesses and workers. But they are only the tip of the iceberg. Deep below the surface lie
tens of thousands of pages of regulations controlling every aspect of economic activity and imposing more than $1 trillion in costs annually. These rules go largely unnoticed, even as they puncture holes in the side of our listing economic ship. But every American can sense that we are taking on water.
The restaurant industry provides an excellent example. We are not paving over the rainforest, or brewing toxic chemicals, or forging steel in blazing furnaces. We provide fast, affordable, high-quality meals in convenient locations to busy customers. Yet we have an 11 page internal list that we use to keep track of the 57 different categories of regulation affecting the way we can operate our business. The regulations address everything including site development and construction, the environment, illegal immigration, workers’ compensation, credit reporting, wages and hours, labor relations, numerous forms of discrimination and occupational safety, not to mention laws as esoteric as the Polygraph Protection Act and the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act.
Strangely enough, that list never seems to shrink. It only grows and grows as bureaucrat after bureaucrat conceives of new rules that will “help” the American people. It is easy to understand why a bureaucrat might think that way—especially one who has never worked in the private sector.
Truth be told, most individual regulations, standing on their own, seem like sensible ideas. But as anyone with business experience intuitively understands, the cumulative cost of this approach—recently estimated by the federal government at more than $10,000 per employee for small firms—far outweighs the benefits. The result is a significantly lower appetite for hiring on the part of most employers.
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