Lawmakers Dodge Responsibility in Security Legislation

By Andy Harris, CEO of Syrgis

As many leaders push for a cleaner and greener nation with more secure manufacturing facilities, many times this means shutting down domestic manufacturing. While their intent is right, the end results can be the opposite. Is this the right thing to do, or is it dodging responsibility? These measures may actually cause significantly worse environmental damage by orders of magnitude, increase worldwide security risks, amplify the risk of serious product quality issues, and cost our nation jobs and tax revenues.

Although words such as “cleaner,” “greener,” “kid safe,” and “improved site security” sound good and may be well-intended, many times these terms and their underlying messages evoke misinformed emotional responses. That results in overreaching regulation, causing a potentially much worse effect in the bigger picture. In these cases, our leaders behind the overreaching regulation are actually dodging their responsibility to us, since manufacturing abroad would likely be done less safely, less securely, with lesser quality and at the expense of valuable U.S. jobs.

America has proven we operate and continue to improve the safest, most secure manufacturing facilities in the world, while also producing the highest quality products with the cleanest processes and smallest environmental footprint. American manufacturing leads the world with best practices and innovation when it comes to new products, quality, the environment, consumer safety and public security. (This too is at risk due to the declining focus on the sciences in US education, but that is another blog topic). Yes, there are always areas we need to improve, and U.S. industry strives to do so continually. If a safer substitute is technically, environmentally and economically feasible, it will be implemented with a sense of urgency by the business leaders.

Many of the current U.S. regulations, policies and R&D tax credits strongly support improved safety and security while also considering the other important affects to the environment, the economy and product quality. Implementing additional overreaching regulation, increasing taxes in these areas, and mandating "safer" substitutes that force manufacturing offshore all have negative consequences to American manufacturing, with massive job losses, lesser product quality, greater environmental damage to the earth, and increased security concerns.