Salazar Questions Biden's 'Government Overreach'

The controversies against the Biden administration continue as lawmakers are now citing government overreach against Miami dry cleaners. This week, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) directed a letter demanding an explanation over the overreach.

Joining her colleagues on the House Small Business Committee, Rep. Salazar directed a letter calling on EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan to give an explanation on what the aftermath of a proposed rule would be like on dry cleaner businesses in Miami.

The rule in question would ban the manufacture and use of Perchloroethylene (PCE) in most industrial and commercial enterprises. This would establish prescriptive workplace controls for PCE in laboratory uses. It would create a 10-year PCE phaseout plan for dry cleaning and spot cleaning businesses.

Lawmakers argue that the rule would affect thousands of small businesses by forcing them to buy new machines and products that do not use PCE. This, the EPA posits would cost each business close to $10.4 million. As such, the cost would result in a financial strain on Miami small business owners.

In a statement, Salazar commented that Miami’s “small businesses are suffering from overregulation, and the Biden Administration seems to not understand the pain.”

Salazar noted that she was calling on the Biden Administration to provide answers to the “unruly EPA policies that are hurting Mom-and-Pop dry cleaners in Miami,” adding that “our federal agencies need to recognize how their regulations affect Main Street America.”

In the letter, the lawmakers call on the EPA “to correctly evaluate small businesses interests – which make up 99.9 percent of all businesses in the United States – when passing any new rule.” The lawmakers then pose six questions for the Biden Administration to respond to, largely focusing on the financial repercussions that dry cleaner business owners could face with the implementation of the rule.