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Posts Tagged ‘Sarbanes-Oxley’
October 17th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
Ron Paul is Making Sense
Posted by Print

I’ve posted before on the difficulty that Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy presents: while Paul is utterly at sea on foreign policy issues and too philosophically pure to countenance the type of compromise that real political progress requires, his libertarian beliefs also make him one of the best candidates in the Republican race on economic issues. Thankfully, Paul has no hope of being the nominee, but let’s hope that his “Restore America” economic plan, unveiled earlier today, has an influence on the GOP field. This is solid stuff, as the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports:

Mr. Paul does get specific when he calls for a 10% reduction in the federal work force, while pledging to limit his presidential salary to $39,336, which his campaign says is “approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker.”  The current pay rate for commander in chief is $400,000 a year.

The Paul plan would also lower the corporate tax rate to 15% from 35%, though it is silent on personal income tax rates, which Mr. Paul would like to abolish. The congressman would end taxes on personal savings and extend “all Bush tax cuts…”

While promising to cut $1 trillion in spending during his first year, Mr. Paul would eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, Interior and Housing and Urban Development…

Mr. Paul would also push for the repeal of the new health-care law, last year’s Wall Street regulations law and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 corporate governance law passed in response to a number of corporate scandals, including Enron.

What’s most remarkable is that Paul — long considered an ideological outlier — is now in line with the majority of the Republican establishment (the movement was on their end, not his). With the exception of his call to abolish the federal income tax and a few of his cabinet department eliminations, these are all priorities that a Republican congress could support coming from a GOP president. That man won’t be Ron Paul … but let’s hope he’s read his plan.

December 11th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Bad News from the House Floor
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In the never ending succession of bad legislation coming out of Congress, the Democrats added another one to the list today.

By a 223-202 vote, the House passed the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009.”  Twenty-seven Democrats joined every single Republican to oppose the legislation.

The bill is a hodgepodge of more regulations, higher taxes and new government.  After Sarbanes-Oxley, Congress thought it had effectively ended the debate over financial regulations.  For Congress, it’s never too late to re-regulate.

You can read the Congressional Research Service summary of the legislation here.

Here is the CBO’s cost estimate of the bill.