Tag Archives: Jeb Hensarling

Wise Advice From The People Who Know

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau was part of the Dodd-Frank legislation aimed at taking the focus away from the actual cause of the financial meltdown of 2008.

For those of you who are new to this website, the following video is the best analysis of the financial crisis of 2008 available. I have embedded it because at some point YouTube will probably take it down.

Dodd-Frank put a stranglehold on business growth and punished people who were not responsible for the crisis. However, those who like big government and wanted more power pushed the narrative that resulted in Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The current head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, has announced that he will resign at the end of November. Investor’s Business Daily suggests that instead of naming a replacement, President Trump should simply shut the agency down.

The editorial at Investor’s Business Daily reminds us of some of the history of the agency:

An October 2016 Supreme Court ruling found CFPB’s structure to be unconstitutional, a violation of the separation of powers in the nation’s supreme law.

One element of the high court’s decision was that Cordray could only be fired by the president for cause — making it very hard to get rid of even an incompetent in the job. Worse, by funding the CFPB from the Federal Reserve, not Congress, the agency lay just outside the direct oversight of Congress. It had massive power over finance in the U.S. economy, with little or no accountability. Cordray did little or nothing to remedy this.

“We are long overdue for new leadership at the CFPB,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas. “The extreme overregulation it imposes on our economy leads to higher costs and less access to financial products and services, particularly with lower and middle incomes.”

The editorial concludes:

From nothing in 2010, the agency now employs more than 1,600 people, with $647 million in budgeted spending last year and another $525 million in civil penalty fines — often collected without any due process for those who were forced to pay up.

Last January, Michael McGrady wrote on The Daily Caller website, “Like every new government program, (CFPB) became a corrupt political bargaining chip in Obama’s administration with the sole mission to assert government supremacy over the economy.” Nothing has changed since then. As we’ve said before, shut it down.

Think of the savings for taxpayers!

Taking Steps To Improve America’s Economy

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about a bill that was recently approved by the House Financial Services Committee.

The article reports:

With little fanfare and even less media coverage, the House Financial Services Committee recently approved along party lines a bill that would significantly reform the economy-deadening Dodd-Frank law. It’s a good first step toward restoring our financial freedom.

The fact is, the 2010 Dodd-Frank law has been a disaster, responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs and putting a damper on economic growth by making credit harder to come by for those who need it most.

In a recent interview with NPR, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas made a succinct case for getting rid of Dodd-Frank: “Free checking at banks has been cut in half. Banking fees have gone up. Working people are finding it more difficult to get mortgages,” he said.

He could have gone further. Small- to medium-size banks — the traditional sources of working capital for small business — have been hurt worst by Dodd-Frank’s extensive regulations that impose billions of dollars in unnecessary costs each year. And rather than repealing too-big-to-fail for big banks, Dodd-Frank actually makes it all but certain that taxpayers will be asked to bailout big banks during the next downturn.

Dodd-Frank was passed with the idea that the banks and Wall Street were responsible for the financial meltdown of 2008. Actually, the government and government policy were much more to blame.

The best explanation I have seen of the cause of the financial crisis can be found in a YouTube video called “Burning Down the House.”

Here is that video:

The article at Investor’s Business Daily further explains:

Under regulatory threat from the government, banks made loans they knew were bad, then the government bought them back. When the Fed went too far in raising interest rates in the mid-2000s, the housing market cratered, banks’ balance sheets were destroyed, and a massive credit crunch and the “Great Recession” ensued. The government caused this crisis — not Wall Street.

As we’ve written repeatedly in the past, Dodd-Frank should have been shut down long ago. It has strangled entrepreneurial activity and dampened economic growth, and made it impossible for millions of Americans to get home loans. It’s a major reason why GDP during the Obama years grew at a pathetic 1.9% rate, rather than the more normal rate of 3% or more.

We hope the House will move quickly to end Dodd-Frank, one of the worst financial regulatory laws in modern history.

It is going to take a while, but the damage done to the American economy by the policies of Congress and the misdirected efforts to correct something that did not cause the problem can be corrected. We need both political parties to work together to make that happen. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is likely. Hopefully the Republicans have enough votes to pass this legislation without any Democratic votes.

A Different Solution To America’s Spending Problem

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The national debt has doubled since 2007.  It is now approximately $19,000,000,000,000. Congress has not been successful at stopping spending, and the economy is struggling along with the burden of debt and over-regulation. One Congressman has a proposal that will deal with at least part of the problem.

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a proposal by Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah).

The article reports:

Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) joined Lee to formally introduce the Article I Regulatory Budget Reform Act, which would require Congress to cast a vote on the “total regulatory burden” federal agencies are able to enforce on the private sector each fiscal year.

“Federal regulations come with a cost, albeit a hidden one. The American people can look up in the federal budget and see a monetary cost for the IRS and the EPA. They should also be able to look up what the regulatory cost for these agencies are as well. Beyond making the cost of federal regulation transparent, a regulatory budget will help restore accountability for the cost of regulation onto the people’s elected representatives,” Hensarling said at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington.

“With a regulatory budget, it would become so much more difficult for members of Congress to simply pass the buck and blame the faceless, nameless bureaucrats for the cost of regulations on the American people’s families and their businesses,” he added.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is charged with making laws. They are supposed to be held accountable for the laws they pass. Unfortunately, we have wandered into a system where unelected bureaucrats are making our laws, and we can’t vote them out of office.

The article adds:

Lee argued that most of the major bills Congress has passed only “establish aspirational guidelines,” which gives the executive branch the power to determine the specifics. He said Congress should establish “regulatory-cost limits” for federal agencies to follow.

“For the rule-writing bureaucrats, these open-ended laws are gifts that keep on giving. For instance, in the years since Congress first passed the Clean Air Act in 1977, federal bureaucrats have used the law to enact more than 13,500 pages of regulations – roughly 30 pages for every page of legislative text,” Lee said.

“But for the American people, this kind of government without consent is a violation of the social compact at the heart of our republic and exactly why they no longer trust the federal government,” he added.

The U.S. Constitution is an amazing document. The government it established works. Unfortunately we have altered that government to the point where it barely works and is not trusted by the American people. We need serious reform in Washington. Senator Lee’s proposal might be a good place to start.

Forget The Scolding By Obama–Look At The History

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Jim Jordan (Ohio politician)

Image via Wikipedia

Fox News yesterday quoted President Obama on the failure of the super committee:

“There will be no easy off ramps on this one,” Obama said at an afternoon press conference where he laid blame squarely on Republicans who refused to bend in their defense of tax cuts for the wealthy during debt talks. “We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure.”

This is simply wrong. The only budget in the past three years proposed by a Democrat was President Obama’s, and it was voted down by the Senate 97 to 0 (according to The Hill).

Big Government posted a more accurate evaluation of where we are and how we got here by Representative Jim Jordan:

Jordan Responds to the Super Committee’s Lack of Agreement

 Washington, DC – Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan offered the following statement after the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed to come to agreement, triggering $1.2 trillion of automatic spending cuts over a ten year period beginning in 2013:“

Throughout the year, the Republican Study Committee has offered solutions to address the debt crisis, including the Cut, Cap and Balance plan that passed the House with bipartisan support.  But instead of a solution, Washington wanted a deal, and thus the Super Committee was created.”

“I want to thank our Republican leadership for holding the line on taxes.  Higher taxes do not create jobs – they only serve to feed Washington’s insatiable appetite to spend.”“

I also want to thank Co-Chairman Jeb Hensarling for his leadership in trying to find bipartisan solutions to stop the out-of-control spending in a town that has only balanced its budget five times in the past 50 years.  Unfortunately, this exercise has further proven that the liberal appetite for bigger government and higher taxes outweighs everything else.”“

Though President Obama acknowledged that entitlement programs are some of the biggest drivers of our debt, he has failed to show any leadership in trying to save them.  Predictably, the tax-and-spend Democrats on the Joint Select Committee fell in line right behind him.  Their failure of leadership could doom these important safety net programs.”“

Moving forward, there are clear and responsible ways to solve our debt and economic problems without raising taxes.  I encourage Congressional leaders to advance the Republican Study Committee’s concrete solutions to create jobs, reduce spending, and balance the budget.”

Solutions from the Republican Study Committee·    

H.R. 408, the Spending Reduction Act, identifies over 100 unnecessary programs, provides a head start towards balancing the budget, and saves taxpayers trillions of dollars over the next decade.     

The RSC Budget for FY 2012 balances the federal budget in less than ten years and institutes reforms that will protect seniors and help save Americans’ health care safety net. 

H.R. 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, cuts spending immediately, caps it in future years, and requires Congress to send a Balanced Budget Amendment to the American public for approval.   

H.R. 3400, the Jobs Through Growth Act, cuts through red tape, creates a simpler and fairer tax code, and tears down barriers to energy production. In short, it creates jobs by growing the economy, not the government     

H.R. 1167, the Welfare Reform Act, builds upon the successful reforms of 1996, paves the way to find efficiencies in the 70+ federal welfare programs, and returns welfare spending to pre-recession levels once unemployment falls to 6.5%.

 

This is a much more accurate picture of the history of the budget battle than the one given by President Obama. Higher taxes on the rich will not solve anything–they will only promote class warfare–one of the major talking points the Democrat party will use in the 2012 election cycle. We don’t need to punish people who have worked hard to be successful. Taking money away from people who work hard and giving it to other people does not encourage anyone to work hard. Do we really want the government deciding how much we are allowed to earn before they start taking it away from us?


 



 

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