U.S. Chamber Says Congress 'Failed' in Its Attempt to Reform Financial System

July 19, 2010

Fincancial

Following today’s Senate vote for final passage of financial reform legislation, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said Congress had “failed” in its attempt to modernize a broken system, highlighting the massive new regulations and bureaucracies that may choke off credit to America’s job creators. 
 
“Congress had a historic opportunity to fix a broken system and it failed,” Donohue said. “For years – long before the markets collapsed – the Chamber has called for modernizing our capital markets. Instead of fixing the system, Washington just piled bureaucracies and massive new regulations onto a broken system. This will only exacerbate uncertainty and jeopardize job creation.” 

A recent Chamber study pointed out that this financial reform bill creates 533 required regulatory rulemakings, 60 studies, and 93 reports. By contrast, the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation passed in 2002 only had 16 rulemakings and six studies. 

“Businesses are concerned with the result of Congress’ efforts but understand that we’re only in the first round of this fight,” Donohue said. “In order to protect Main Street businesses, the Chamber will continue working with the growing number of regulators in the coming years as this bill takes effect.” 

More than six in ten (62%) of these Main Street business owners are concerned “the new financial regulatory reform bill will result in an enormous regulatory burden on U.S. businesses,” resulting in “slower economic growth and fewer American jobs,” according to an independent poll of 300 small businesses. 

“The voices of America’s job creators are ringing loud and clear – enough is enough,” Donohue said. “We are seeing evidence in everything from health care to financial reform to energy that growing government does not grow jobs. Going forward, we will use all available options to correct the flaws in this bill, eliminate business uncertainty, and put Americans back to work.”

Since its inception three years ago, the Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness has led a bipartisan effort to modernize and strengthen the outmoded regulatory systems that have governed our capital markets. The CCMC is committed to working aggressively with the administration, Congress, and global leaders to implement reforms to strengthen the economy, restore investor confidence, and ensure well-functioning capital markets.

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