Panels of witnesses are not supposed to sound like a Greek chorus but it happens sometimes. It happened during that hearing on regulatory burdens covered in this week's Journal.

It started with Witness A, who described his government contracting experience to the subcommittee. The hard work of landing the contract was already behind him. Yet, it took another 200 uncompensated hours of his valuable time just to negotiate his fee.

Why? Becuase the procurement officers involved wanted detailed information the business owner didn't have, from members of his staff that didn't exist. In spite of the potential for millions of dollars in business, he almost walked away from the painful process.

Witness B followed immediately with the oft-repeated observation that small businesses are different from large ones. They don't have staff attorneys or accountants to keep the books and interpret law for them. They have to pay retail for those services.

And, just to hammer home the point, Witness C observed that the opportunity to increase specialization of employee tasks occurs as a firm grows in size. Smaller firms simply don't have those specialized employees.

So ... do you suppose, with all that repetition, anybody got the point?

The reason why it is so difficult for government and small businesses to deal with each other in any context seems to be that very few in the government understand how small businesses operate.

The only people who seem receptive to this message are folks who already know it. That's a problem all by itself.

SBA Office of Advocacy Chief Counsel Tom Sullivan has achieved a laudable measure of success in what must surely be a somewhat thankless job through education rather than coercion. Maybe that is the path that would yield the best results in general.

Maybe somebody from the Maryland or Virginia Small Business Development Center network needs to go to Washington and conduct classes for federal lawmakers and bureaucrats, so that they come to understand the structure and operations of small businesses.

While they are at it, they could help those federal government types review their processes and procedures, to uncover the gazillion ways in which they are not small business friendly.

Just as too many lawmakers appear to believe they are doing enough for the economy by crafting policy focused on large businesses, so too many federal bureaucrats believe they can treat all businesses like they treat large ones, without ill effects.

Anybody who can figure out how to dispel these well-entrenched myths should bottle it and sell it. I'll confess, it's got me stumped.