NASE in the News

NASE President & CEO Keith Hall Testifies

NASE was privileged to testify before the House Small Business Committee hearing on Occupational Hazards: How Excessive Licensing Hurts Small Business.

The hearing provided a wonderful opportunity for Mr. Hall to provide insight from NASE members on the impact occupational licensing has on the millions of self-employed and micro-business owners across the country.

In the testimony, Mr. Hall highlight three areas of concern regarding those job duties that require licensing:
1) the licensing barriers of money and time;
2) the inconsistency of licensing requirements from state-to- state and locality-to- locality;
3) the impact on minorities and other vulnerable populations.

Additionally, due to a snapshot survey that we conducted in advance of our testimony, we were able to provide the committee with data as it related to the self-employed experience with licensing requirements, including that 70% of NASE members must adhere to some level of licensing tied to their profession and nearly 68% said that they find that the licensing requirements hinder their ability to operate their small business.
With this information, Mr. Hall was able to provide the committee with some proposals that ensure that licensing requirements aren’t hindering job growth:

1) Support and amplify the FTC’s Economic Liberty Task Force;
2) Work to encourage associations and organizations to review their own licensing requirements, which will in turn, encourage state and local governments to review their licensing requirements;
3) Support scholarship and other avenues in which associations or states could provide financial recourse for costs related to licensing.

The NASE believes that an entrepreneur-friendly economy is one that is designed to encourage mobility across state lines in order to conduct business in a safe way and provide customers with the best products available.

It was our honor to represent the self-employed voice and we continue to strive to find ways to make it easier, not harder, for people to realize the dream of self-employment!