E&W Blog

Tucked into the Democrats’ socialist spending bill is a nasty scheme intended to bleed American job creators dry.
 
The Education and Labor Committee provisions in this bill alone would add a whopping $454.1 billion to the deficit.
 
How do Democrats propose to pay for their outrageous expansion of the federal bureaucracy? Through massive fines leveled on job creators.
 
These unprecedented increases in civil monetary penalties against job creators included in the bill add up to at least $2.76 billion over ten years, reports Bloomberg Law. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration penalties will be increased by 512 percent across the board, and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) penalties will be hiked by 900 percent. An organization representing small businesses across America pointed out that “FLSA violations currently operate under a strict liability standard, meaning employers who have an honest misinterpretation of the law or made an isolated mistake are not given leniency under the law...”
 
These outrageously inflated fines will harm small businesses and embolden government inspectors to harass job creators, who will be hesitant or unable to afford to contest these huge citations.
 
Historic inflation numbers and the Democrats’ tax-and-spend mania are drowning job creators who are struggling to stay afloat as they face a sea of Biden-led failed economic policies. The last thing workers and employers need are antagonistic federal bureaucrats breathing down their necks hoping to catch a misstep.
 
This bill was never about protecting or empowering the American worker, it’s about rewarding liberal special interest groups. If this bill were actually about the well-being of Americans, it would build up workers instead of union bosses, job creators instead of the radical green lobby, and the American family instead of the federal bureaucracy.