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ICYMI: Hensarling Discusses Ex-Im and Dodd-Frank on “Opinion Journal”


Washington, Jun 9 -

 

Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) discussed the Export-Import Bank and the Dodd-Frank Act with Mary Kissel of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Excerpts from their conversation are below.

Chairman Hensarling on the Export-Import Bank:

"There’s a lot of things wrong with it. One, you’re transferring credit risk off of Fortune 50 balance sheets onto the taxpayer balance sheet. Last I looked, my iPad is awash with reports from the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, saying that our debt and spending trajectory is unsustainable. That’s number one. Number two, it’s just not fair. I mean what we’re doing here is we’re subsidizing companies that could afford frankly to finance their own exports, and by the way almost 99% of all American exports are exported without the benefit of transferring credit risk to the taxpayer balance sheet so it’s not necessary."

"It really goes to what kind of society do we want? Is this the type of economic growth that we want, where you are essentially rewarded, not by how hard you work on Main Street but by who you know in Washington? And that’s what a lot of the Export-Import Bank is about."

Chairman Hensarling on the Fifth Anniversary of Dodd-Frank:

"You have all this avalanche of regulation, and at the end of the day, what we’ve seen since the passage of Dodd-Frank is the big banks have become bigger, the small banks have become fewer, the economy is still moribund and the taxpayer is more in debt. That’s hardly a sales pitch."

"I mean we are becoming a less dynamic economy. It’s becoming more difficult for low and middle income people to rise in America. I mean we are really losing what has made us so unique. You look at any national poll, and for the first time, I think ever, people believe their children will have less opportunity and a lower standard of living. And there is a nexus, there is a direct correlation between this onslaught of federal regulation, a lot of it represented by Dodd-Frank, by Obamacare, by the EPA, by all of alphabet soup government. And we’ve got to try to do something about it and I think ultimately we can."