Jon Christian Ryter's Conservative World

Internet Articles (2012)
Internet Articles (2011)
Internet Articles (2010)
Internet Articles (2009)
Internet Articles (2008)
Internet Articles (2007)
Internet Articles (2006)
Internet Articles (2005)
Internet Articles (2004)
Internet Articles (2003)
Internet Articles (2002)
Internet Articles (2001)

From The Mailbag

Books
Order Books

Cyrus
Rednecker

Search

About
Comments

Links

Congressman Mike Kelly [R-PA] excited the House of Representatives on July 26 when he stood up for the small business owners of America with a rousing speech about the rising cost of bureaucratic red tape. Kelly held up reams of federal regulations that have been instituted by the Obama Administration's attempt to convert free enterprise America into a socialist gulag. As Kelly attacks the 1,111 page Get Top Know Your Customer Law, he noted that as the Fed protects the mega banks with laws designed to strangle small banks, he said that while he believes the small banks can fight their way through the red tape, the reality is that "...too big to fail means you're too small to survive." And for anyone to suggest that there's anyway that small banks or lending institutions can go through this same process and come out other end able to offer the products they've offered before is ludicrous." Small town America relies on small banks and small credit unions for their operational financing. "Does this make any sense to anyone?"

Kelly's sage wisdom reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's brand of wisdom when he said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And nothing accomplishes that objective faster or more completely than bureaucratic red tape because you can't fire the bureaucracy—only blame them.

The Democrats' motion to "recommit"—revert to the procedural rules instituted by the Democrats in the 111th Congress—fell to the wayside. Under Jeffersonian rules, each new convened Congress approves and implements its own governing rules which, of course, favor the party in power. A motion to recommit waives that rule and the House then operates under the rules implemented by the opposing party's House Speaker before they lost power.

When he rose to speak, first term Congressman Mike Kelly [R-PA] said: "In 2011 we came to this House for one reason—it was a motion to recommit. We recommitted the people of the United States. We recommitted the people of the United States that we were going to change the way business was done in this town. This motion to recommit is a joke. It's ridiculous. Let me tell you what it's like in the real world and not inside the beltway. I operated a business that my father started in back in 1953 after being a parts clerk in a General Motors warehouse, going to the fight the war (in Korea) and coming back home. I called our body shop manager today, Jason Shaols. He's been with us for 26 years. And I said to Jason I need to know the cost of tape...He said, "My goodness, the cost of tape has gone crazy. We use two types of tape. We use green tape. It's the tape we use when we use water on a job, and we have to make sure the tape sticks. That's up to $4 a roll...The other tape is yellow tape...That's when we're going to paint a car and we don't have to use the green tape...It's $2 a roll. But Mike, I've got to tell you. We're spending $160 a month on tape and its really starting to make me wonder if I'm really doing the right thing." Kelly noted that they were now spending over $1,000 a year on green and yellow tape. Shaols acknowledged that they were. Kelly asked him he knew the cost of red tape. Shaols replied he didn't because they didn't use any red tape.

Kelly said: "Yes, we do. It's $1.75 trillion dollars. That's the cost of red tape!" Kelly went on to say he called a friend who operates a local bank across the street from his business in Butler. Kelly asked him about the 1,111 page anti-money laundering "Get To Know Your Borrower" law enacted by the 111th Congress. The Get To Know Your Borrower Act poses as a bill theoretically designed to more benevolently gauge the creditworthiness of a loan applicant not on credit scores but that local bank's knowledge of how well the customer pays his or her bills, regardless what his or her credit score may be. In reality, it is designed specifically to provide more regulations that will allow the Fed to control those same banks.

Railing against this law on July 25, 2012 was Kelly who noted, from a Financial Services Committee meeting a day earlier, that what this law is doing is restricting consumer assess to credit through red tape.

Access to capital is critical to small businesses in the United States and the Obama Administration is playing Russian Roulette with the free enterprise system of America. We are trying to get job creators back in the loop to grow those jobs, but the jolly "green" giant social progressives who control who gets help and who does not measure those customers not by their credit scores and not by whether or not they will succeed and repay those loans, but by how green is the company asking for the loan.

Kelly scored big after tiring of Obama's new Consumer Financial Bureau Director Richard Cordray attempting to deflect every question thrown at him, rebutting Cordray who questioned what would happen to the new bureau's regulatory apparatus if his appointment is successfully challenged by Republicans. Kelly refuted his argument by saying "Only inside this beltway do we come with the solutions that are so difficult nobody can pull the trigger anymore. The purpose of this hearing is are we restricting credit? The answer is, yes we are...We're just tapping around the outside of this. It is so hard for these people they're going out of business." Cordray then asked, "Would you like me to respond, or just listen?"

Kelly replied he would like Cordray—and the Obama Administration—to listen "...because they have a deaf ear when it comes to what's going on in the private sector." But his verbal coup d'tat came the following day on the floor of Congress when he said: "Do you want to know the price of regulations? You want to talk about the thousands and thousands of pages that we put on the backs of the job creators? You want to talk about creating jobs in America? When you want to see a nation that doesn't want to participate but wants dominate in the world market? Then let them rise. Take the heavy boot off the throat of America's job creators and let them breathe!" At that moment, the House chamber exploded with a standing ovation, and chants of "USA! USA!" echoed throughout the House floor. "The jobs we are talking about," Kelly continued, "are not red jobs, or blue jobs. They are American jobs! If you want this country to thrive, and not just survive, then please start playing the game by the rules and stop this ridiculous mockery of what we do in this town. We are so out of touch with the American people, and you know what all of this does? It adds layer after layer of cost; and that cost is ultimately paid by the American consumer. You want to have more revenues, then let the tide rise for all votes. Let us be able to not only survive but to thrive. This is not a left or right issue, it's a American issue..."

That may be true for those who still believe in America; those who still believe that individual initiate and the free enterprise system is the best economic system in the world. But those with a stranglehold on the American economic system do not believe in free enterprise; and they do not believe in initial initiative. Obama made that clear last week when he said, "You started a business, you didn't do that yourself. Somebody else did that." The social progressive "it takes a village" philosophy extends to everything—including free enterprise. In the communist world of the social progressives, not only must you share your wealth with the useful idiots, you apparently must also share the sweat equity you invest in building your own dreams for your family and those you employ with the useful idiots and couch potatoes as well because, according to Obama, someone else's sweat equity built the roads that brought people to your business, or created other jobs that allowed those employed in those endeavors to spend some of their sweat equity income with you, making you more successful. It never occurred to Obama that there is more than one small business in America. There are thousands upon thousands of them, creating millions of jobs to train the next generation of job creators—none of whom work for the government.