When I was researching the legislative history of the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act this week, I was struck once again by the simple fact that microbusiness owners are very different creatures from federal legislators.

If a microbusiness owner sees a problem, they fix it.

If they see something in their business that isn't working, they tweak it until it does work.

And if no amount of tweaking takes care of the problem, they pitch that particular thing and try something else.

The legislative process doesn't lend itself to that kind of straightforward problem-solving. That is why so few microbusiness owners are especially interested in the political processes behind the policies that have such a profound impact on their businesses.

It's not really that they don't care. It's just that, as often as not, listening to the convoluted tales of how and why a certain bill may or may not make it to the Oval Office drives them into an agony of frustration.

If lawmakers spent more of their time talking to their microbusiness owner constituents, they would hear this fairly often: "Well, why don't you just fix it?"

And, when you have something like the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act, that seems to be non-controversial and uncomplicated, it is difficult to explain why it is not now the law of the land.

At least, it's difficult to explain it and still make sense.

Lots of people want to teach microbusiness owners to advocate for their businesses and part of that is teaching them to be patient with the way Congress works. But there is something to be said for the microbusiness tendency toward straight-forward problem solving that lawmakers could afford to study, too.

After all, it is a part of their job to handle some of the world's most intractable issues. If they can't even do the easy stuff, where does that leave us?