> Also: why are Republicans proposing big new regulation that would apply to every US business, impose additional bookkeeping & accounting work for every busine

> Also: why are Republicans proposing big new regulation that would apply to every US business, impose additional bookkeeping & accounting work for every business, and then not improve consumer privacy protection? Two potential reasons. One: They believe federal privacy regulations are inevitable, and want to take the opportunity to shape it as much as they can. Two years ago there were competing Republican & Democrat proposals for privacy legislation; the meats were pretty similar to each other, and GDPR, and CCPA. The differences were some subtle details around the edges that are likely to end up being HUGELY impactful. For example, the democrat proposal included a Right of Private Action while the republican proposal did not. You can blah blah blah all goddamn day about what counts as private and what doesn't. But at the end of the day, the thing that matters most is "what happens when a company breaks the law?" Being able to sue them yourself is a very large difference from requiring all enforcement run through the Attorney General or an executive branch whose funding can be rescinded. Two, but related to the first: There are currently multiple states that have local privacy regulations. The number is likely to increase. Companies would prefer to deal with one set of laws rather than fifty even if the one set of laws is more difficult that any of the fifty laws it replaces. On a related note, the other serious difference between democrat and republican proposals was called "pre-emption." The republic proposal would have removed the ability for states to pass stricter privacy laws at home.