Some 76,292 pages of regulations were added to the Federal Register in 2011, heaping an estimated $232 billion in new compliance costs on a struggling national economy.

According to Sen. Marco Rubio, even though that puts the paperwork burden for businesses at 119.4 million hours per year, a bill that might have "brought some common sense to the outdated regulatory system in America" never made it to the Senate, even though it sailed through the House.

And even if the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS Act) had passed both chambers, President Barack Obama said he would have vetoed it.

Geoff Davis, R-Ky., who co-sponsored the bill in the House, told Sunshine State News last week that the REINS Act would subject all major regulations to congressional approval. If a majority of both the House and the Senate doesn't approve the regulation, it dies.

Said Davis, this bill "has the potential to transform the way Washington does business, to restore us to economic dominance and to make this an American century."

"It's very simple," he said. "When a rule is scored as a major rule -- $100 million or more in cumulative economic impact -- instead of it being forced on the American people at the end of the 60-day comment period, it comes back up to Capitol Hill under joint resolution for a stand-alone vote in the House, a stand-alone vote in the Senate, and then must be signed by the president before it can be enforced on the American people."

Like Rubio, Rep. Jeb Hansarling, R-Texas, called the bill a "common-sense" piece of legislation. "It forces accountability ... It simply weighs the benefits of a regulation to be balanced with the cost to our own jobs. Jobs ought to be No. 1 in this House, and the No. 1 jobs bill we can pass is the REINS Act."

According to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who serves on the Senate's Small Business and Entrepreneurship committees and who was one of the bill's co-sponsors in his chamber, small businesses spend an estimated $10,500 per employee to comply with federal regulations, a considerable burden on the private sector's ability to create jobs in good times, let alone bad.

Rubio agrees with the president, that regulations based on sound science that keep the American people safe are an important function of the federal government. But, he says, "it's quite clear that our runaway regulatory system must be reined in to help foster private-sector job creation."

An estimate from the American Action Forum found that, had the REINS Act passed, it could have yielded a regulatory cost savings of more than $40 billion and saved 55,000 jobs.

Nevertheless, Democrats viewed the bill as a measure that would negatively impact the regulatory process and eliminate "necessary" regulations. Said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in a prepared statement, "I continue to be disappointed that House Republicans are wasting Congress's time on ideologically-driven bills to erode federal protections for consumers and communities instead of working on a plan to create jobs."

Said Rubio, a Senate co-sponsor of the REINS Act, "Washington's regulatory blizzard is also having a disproportionate effect on Florida's dynamic economy.

"In particular, I am actively working to halt an Internal Revenue Service mandate on U.S. banks that would cause tens of billions of dollars to flee the economy ... to provide relief for fast-growing companies from onerous regulations in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and to repeal the Federal Communications Commission's net-neutrality rules, which would stifle job-creating investment in the Internet industry."

As the country rings in 2012, Congress will not have passed a bill that controls the growth or impact of government rules -- rules, Republicans say, that increase the cost of starting a business or expanding an existing one.

A website for the public to access federal regulations is the multi-agency site Regulations.gov. There, citizens can view and comment on the federal regulations of the 35 federal departments and agencies that participate in the site.

Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.