When Legislation Gets Out Of Hand

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about the Dodd-Frank bill that was supposed to remedy the problems that caused the 2008 economic meltdown. Aside from the fact that the bill does not address the major cause of the meltdown–the sub-prime mortgage market, there are a few other issues with the bill.

The article reports:

According to a release The Daily Caller obtained that will be sent out with the announcement of the new Web service, the legislation — and the rules government regulators have written to go with it — has already had a profound effect on the financial sector.

Regulators have written only 185 of the expected 400 rules. But those 185 rules are expected to cost the private sector more than 24 million man-hours each year to comply.

How much money does 24 million man-hours actually cost the private sector?

The article further points out:

Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer, the chairman of the committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations, told The Daily Caller that means that instead of hiring people to handle small business loans, banks will be hiring staff to comply with the new government regulations, ultimately having a negative impact on job creation.

“For example, let’s just get it down to the community banker — the person that loans money to most of the small businesses in our country,” Neugebauer said in a phone interview. “We’ve had a few community bankers come in here and say, ‘you know, they’re hiring a lot more compliance officer than they are loan officers.’ That is increasing the cost of banking and, ultimately, they have to charge higher interest rates and higher fees.”

Punishing people who make a profit will not prevent financial difficulties in the future, it will only create them. It is time we repealed Dodd-Frank and waited for a pro-business Congress to rewrite it. There is nothing wrong with being pro-business–business provides jobs and income for Americans. If we do not support business, we will eventually have a nation where everyone expects the government to support them and there is no one to pay taxes to the government. Unless there is serious change in Washington, that is where we are headed.

 

 

 
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