John Sununu Quotes

Don't punish small businesses with over-regulation.

We cannot afford the EPA's continued expansion of red tape that is slowing economic growth and threatening to entangle millions of small businesses.

Our government is just way too interested in mucking around in Silicon Valley by creating and enforcing rules based on little or no understanding of the consequences.

A focus on regulatory overreach, things that the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost, is probably the single greatest opportunity we have for having a positive impact on job creation.

Every new rule, mandate, and regulatory edict is one more obstacle that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators have to swallow.

I saw my father deal with every headache the government threw his way - whether it had to do with the signs on the front of the building or the prices on the showroom floor. He knew he could do better, if government would just get out of the way - and stay out of the way. He was right.

Often you see big companies, big banks who are eager to embrace crushing regulatory burdens because they drive up everyone's costs.

The sum of all the current regulations presents ever increasing hurdles.

The big producer is going to figure out how to deal with whatever the rules are, but the little guy who is running a few hundred units or maybe feeding 1,500 cattle a year, how will they ever comply with these requirements?

While legislation obviously is political, we now have allowed regulation to become politicized, which we believe will likely lead to some bad outcomes.

I think a lot of times there is a tendency in Washington to make rules because of something that was adverse or fraud or something like that. And we make a lot of rules and end up hurting a lot of innocent people that are trying to start up their companies.

Every regulation requires two more regulations to deal with the unintended consequences.

Repealing rules therefore requires federal agencies to explain why the factual and scientific bases for the predicted benefits of their rules were wrong or no longer adequate to justify those rules.

As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.

As the son of a small business owner, I know how regulatory overreach can stifle our economy and cost Americans jobs.

I frankly think we in the financial service world believe we need appropriate kinds of regulations. No question about that. But when something like Dodd-Frank has been created, sort of in the mystery of night, it is a huge document. It's vast. It weighs about 10 pounds when I carry it around.

Federal rules and regulations too often become seemingly insurmountable obstacles to simple changes that can have a positive impact.

We've got a very poor record on unnecessary red tape; extra cost to business; people being asked to do things they don't need to; over the top regulation, misinterpreted regulation, poor guidelines.

The federal government has gone too far on many nonessential regulations that are harming small businesses. Employers are rightly concerned about the costs of these regulations - so they stop hiring, stop spending, and start saving for a bill from the federal government.

The Commission concludes that the banking supervisors failed to adequately and proactively identify and police the weaknesses of the banks and thrifts or their poor corporate governance and risk management, often maintaining satisfactory ratings on institutions until just before their collapse. This failure was caused by many factors, including beliefs that regulation was unduly burdensome, that financial institutions were capable of self-regulation, and that regulators should not interfere with activities reported as profitable.

It’s a battle in which the Wall Street lobbying and public-relations machine will have a decisive advantage…. With the regulators, you don’t have to win. You just have to gum them up. And that is exactly what Wall Street has done.

Fannie Mae may have conformed to the rules but the rules didn’t conform to reality. A major bank or financial institution could meet every single regulatory requirement yet still be at the risk of collapse.

How much we all suffer from lack of oversight from the government.

The expenses of complying with Washington's torrent of mandates and regulatory overreach are costing American workers jobs and income growth.

There is no question that the federal government sometimes overdoes it in issuing rules and regulations.