Accelerating Access to Capital Act of 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. LOUDERMILK. I thank the gentleman from the great State of Texas for yielding.
Mr. Chair, we are at a time when the American people are forced to comply with crushing regulations that stifle business growth and strip Americans of their livelihood. At this time, Congress must take steps to reduce the red tape in the private sector.
Earlier this year, the American Action Forum reported that the Dodd- Frank Act is costing Americans and consumers more now than any time since it was enacted. What ObamaCare has done to the cost of health care, Dodd-Frank has done to our financial sector.
Since it was enacted, this law has resulted in 73 million hours of paperwork and $36 billion of harmful costs riding on the backs of taxpayers. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reports that regulatory compliance is now the fastest growing job field in the financial services sector.
To put that in perspective, Dodd-Frank takes 37,000 full-time employees just to comply with the law for 1 year. These statistics are evidence of Ronald Reagan's warning that ``government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.''
H.R. 2357, the Accelerating Access to Capital Act, would expand the number of companies that are eligible to use a simplified registration form for public offerings, which will allow companies to obtain SEC approval in a matter of days instead of months.
For too long, the SEC has been a barrier to investment capital, which is contrary to its mission. This change would allow private companies to focus more on growing their businesses and creating jobs and less on complying with excessive regulations.
Mr. Chair, at a time when our Nation is in the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, we must take bold and decisive steps to reduce the excessive reach of government in our lives and foster a healthy economy. H.R. 2357 achieves these goals, and I encourage my colleagues to support the legislation.
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