Mr. President, cutting regulations will cost jobs, and lives

[Enrique]

and other costs.

They talk about impeding "growth". Yep, if growth means profits. They talk about it like it means jobs, but sometimes it's exactly the opposite.

Of course, to Obama's Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street friends, regulations are "burdensome," just like they say. That's because they have to pay in some way to comply with the regulations. Often times they have to do one of their least favorite things: HIRE people.

I'll give two examples from my own experience near the bottom of the economy, where I was employed solely because regulations forced my employer to hire me. One was at a call center for a natural gas utility. They had to hire a bunch of phone people to handle the call volume for the upcoming winter. Did this need for operators come from a heartfelt desire to serve their customers well? Hell no! It came because the hated GOVERNMENT mandated that they maintain a certain level of service. The Public Service Commission measured how long customers had to be on hold, and they fined any company who made them wait more than an hour to get service. If it weren't for that regulation, the phone staff would have been decimated and customers would be waiting a really long time to get through to anyone.

The other example is at a gas station, where I worked the overnight shift. I was instructed that between certain hours at night, there had to be at least two employees scheduled otherwise we had to close the store. Was that because the company desired at a human level that we valued employees be safe? Hell no! It was a STATE LAW, which expired without debate or public comment while I was employed there. The very day the law expired, my overnight co-worker was removed from the schedule. They didn't waste a second. He was outta there.

[geek tragedy]

1. Most regulations are good, but not all are as good as they could be. nt

[OregonBlue]

2. I have no doubt there are many, many regulations that are no longer effective or relevant. I think

this is a very smart move by Obama. As a small business owner, I know that I am doing a lot more paperwork that is necessary and most of it probably is never even looked at.

[Enrique]

3. I don't think your business needs more regulations

I'm confident you are not a big polluter and that you are sure anyone working for you is safe on the job, and that your customers aren't in danger from your product, and that you're not ripping them off.

The regulations we need are for the people that don't act responsibly on their own, of which there are many in our large complex country.

[OregonBlue]

4. I believe this review is to see what is and is not working. Why assume it's going to be bad until we

know what will be eliminated. The financial regs are not being reviewed. They said they had found instances or regulations that directly contradicted each other. I don't doubt there are many that simply don't apply any longer as processes and technology has changed.