In the short run,
these consolidations will mean significant staff cuts across all six agencies.
These cuts, whether through attrition, early retirements, or reductions in
force, will disrupt relationships within government, and between government and
the businesses these agencies are supposed to assist. Agency action will take
longer and require more effort from constituent businesses. For many months,
everything will seem to grind to a halt while newly reorganized departments
draft, publish and issue regulations implementing the proposed changes. Time
delays already built into the regulatory process will frustrate business
leaders and government bureaucrats alike.
However, if President
Obama succeeds in putting together a “single point of contact” relationship
between business and the federal government, like the business services hotline
Mayor Daley established in Chicago, the final outcome should significantly
streamline all interactions between the federal regulatory bureaucracy and the
small businesses which drive the American economy forward. It remains to be seen whether the intentional
Republican House blockade of everything President Obama puts in the hopper will
kill this initiative aborning.
