The Domino Effect of Obama's Regulations

The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein reports today on one of the many ways in which the Obama administration's regulatory policies are hurting small businesses, creating additional uncertainty in the economy, and generally killing jobs. Klein writes:

There are 34 million ways to order a Domino's Pizza, so, thanks to President Obama's national health care law, the chain's franchisees may have to spend more than $5 million attempting to squeeze calorie data next to every one of their menu items. 

Not that the company is trying to hide anything. The Domino's website already provides nutritional information to the 90 percent of customers who order online or by phone. 

The chain also has the information in pamphlet form for the few customers who actually visit one of its 4,909 physical stores. But that's not good enough to comply with new federal rules expected to be finalized by year's end.

Section 4205 of the national health care law, "Nutritional Labeling of Standard Menu Items at Chain Restaurants," caused little stir when Obamacare passed last year.

But the new rules are now causing a major headache for businesses, serving as yet another example of how the Obama administration is enacting sweeping changes without consideration of their real-world effects.

Obama's fiscal policy notwithstanding, the regulatory burden this administration has placed on small businesses is overwhelming many of them. As Klein points out, a lot of the big corporations that the administration targets with these regulations completely miss the mark and end up saddling small business owners like the people who own Domino's franchises. Klein quotes one franchise owner who worked his way up from his job as a pizza delivery boy in the 1980s to owning four Domino's franchises in Maryland. The franchises average about 40k a year in profit. The new menu regulations could cost as much as $4,700 a year to maintain the new menus. "There are so many different things that I have to do right now that are just completely unnecessary that take away from our profits," the franchise owner tells Klein. "When does it end? When does this stuff end? Just give a small business guy a break and let me take care of my customers and take care of my people."