October 16, 2009

 

This week in Washington, I continued my fight against efforts to create a new $400 million-plus federal bureaucracy to impose new regulations on East Texas small businesses and community financial institutions. Not only will this agency kill jobs in East Texas, it will essentially tell each of us what kind of credit cards, mortgages, auto and small business loans we can use.

 

At a time when over 3 million Americans have lost their jobs since President Obama took office, Congress should be providing tax and regulatory relief for small businesses, which create 3 out of every 4 jobs in our country.  Instead, big government supporters want to impose even more taxes and more regulations on them. 

 

I tried to exclude each and every one of our federally insured small community banks and credit unions from the reach of this draconian new agency, and while my amendment was defeated, I think it is important to fight for our communities’ small businesses.  Do we want the same government who is running AIG, General Motors and our nation’s largest banks to have this power over our community banks and credit unions?

 

Small businesses are the job engine of our economy and there is a network of healthy community banks that are eager to lend to them.  We need community financial institutions to help our small businesses create jobs.  Saddling community financial institutions with punitive regulations from a draconian new one-size-fits-all federal bureaucracy is the wrong way to get Main Street working again.

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