Smart.

“It is hard enough for small businesses to keep their doors open under this Administration’s failed economic experiment, and the last thing employers need is additional regulations that kill jobs,” said Gov. Perry. “While the president issues executive orders to study what regulations harm business, I believe we need immediate action, not bureaucratic studies. So, starting today, the president should put a six-month freeze on all pending federal regulations. The Department of Labor, the EPA and hosts of other federal agencies have already done enough damage. Let’s give small businesses a reprieve from burdensome regulations.”

The governor added, “Our nation cannot and must not endure four more years of rising unemployment, rising taxes and rising debt. The greatest threat to our economy is a President trying to spend our way out of our economic spiral.”

Perry notes that 2.5 million jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate has gone up about 2% since Barack Obama took office in January 2009. One in six Americans searching for a job can’t find one. That’s unacceptable.

And yet the federal government continues to pile more and more mandates and regulations on the private sector, squeezing out every last bit of innovation and viability, until there’s nothing else to squeeze out. Then they squeeze more.

The governor is right to call for a freeze on new regulation. Particularly frivolous and redundant regulation that serves no purpose other than to create new jobs for federal bureaucrats. It’s time to put Americans back to work.