Financial Reform Bill Means Job Losses on Wall Street

COMMENTARY Markets and Finance

Financial Reform Bill Means Job Losses on Wall Street

Jul 26, 2010 3 min read
COMMENTARY BY

Policy Analyst

As senior fellow in government studies at The Heritage Foundation, Brian Darling...

Announcing the Obama Tax Increase of 2011

President Barack Obama has pledged to save or create jobs for Americans. Sadly, his failure to extend the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and his decision to sign a financial services “reform” measure will end up squandering or destroying American jobs.  Not only that, but the financial services law contains what may be an unconstitutional provision that enables bureaucrats to force affirmative action on the basis of gender and race.  The elites in Washington, D.C., say they want to create new jobs and expand the economy, yet their actions are taking us in the wrong direction. Kill the Death Tax

Sen. Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) unsuccessfully offered an amendment last week to the bill extending unemployment benefits until November 30.  The DeMint provision would have fully repealed the Death Tax (also known as the Estate Tax) that is scheduled to go from 0 to 55% at the end of the year if Congress and the President don’t take any action.  Congressional inaction would especially harm small business.

The American Family Business Foundation estimates that about 50 million workers are employed in small business.  AFBF estimates that a permanent repeal of the death tax would increase small business capital by $1.6 trillion, increase payrolls 2.6%, expand investment 3%, create an additional 1.5 million jobs and decrease unemployment by almost 1%.  That’s a stimulus plan!

Yet this administration seems to believe only in spending your tax dollars on “Green Jobs” and expanding the federal bureaucracy instead of simulating the economy.

Job Losses in Wall Street Reform

The President signed a new law last week governing financial services.  The measure is projected to destroy jobs on Wall Street.  The Business Roundtable estimates that this new law may discourage investment and job growth.  It says the law “takes our nation in the wrong direction.”  This is yet another example of job-destruction by President Obama.

Racial Preferences in Wall Street Reform

One provision buried in the new law regulating Wall Street sets up a massive new bureaucracy to force financial firms doing business with the federal government to abide by new racial and gender preferences.  Section 342 of the new law empowers bureaucrats to “develop standards” for assessing a company’s diversity policies.  Conservatives fear that this new law will empower the federal government to force racial and gender quotas on private enterprise.  Not only will this bill destroy private sector jobs.  It will also stimulate the expansion of government bureaucrats’ influence over the hiring decisions and promotion policies of Wall Street.

Elena Kagan

The nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court picked up two Republican supporters last week: Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Richard Lugar (Ind.). Sadly, Graham said he thinks the Senate should be a rubber stamp for presidential nominees.  “I’m going to vote for her because I believe the last election had consequences,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The problem is that Kagan—during her tenure as solicitor general—argued for banning political pamphlets contrary to the explicit words of the 1st Amendment and has engaged in a lifetime of activism seeking to gut the 2nd Amendment.

Conservatives worry that Elena Kagan’s liberal extremism brings the court within one vote of making the individual right to keep and bear arms meaningless.  If she’s merely a rubber stamp for whatever restrictive regulations that folks like Chicago Mayor Daley can dream up, our rights could be trampled.  Conservatives also worry Kagan will bring the court one vote closer to a judicial philosophy that would tolerate serious infringements on the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans who want to participate in the political process.  The vote on Kagan before the full Senate is expected before the August recess begins, perhaps as early as the 1st.

New START Treaty

Reportedly, some Republicans are working on a deal to have the Senate pass this treaty.  The problem is that the secret record of the negotiations between the United States and Russia is rumored to contain an informal arrangement to dismantle American missile defense.

Prominent conservatives Mitt Romney and John Bolton have come out against ratification under the current circumstances, yet Human Events has learned that some Republicans may be cutting a deal:

Agree to the treaty in exchange for some money for nuclear modernization.  Money alone, however, will not solve the problems with the treaty and wouldn’t necessarily prove sufficient to reverse the decline in nuclear weapons modernization.

President Obama can show leadership by backing away from the New START Treaty and taking action to right the economic ship.  Otherwise, America will have a weaker national defense and a weaker economy going into 2011.

Brian Darling is director of U.S. Senate Relations at The Heritage Foundation.

First appeared in Human Events