Columns

In 2010, just two years after one of the largest financial collapses in our nation’s history, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. At the time, President Obama and Congress promised to hold Wall Street accountable and protect American families from unfair, abusive financial practices.

But six years later, we have seen firsthand that Dodd-Frank, as it is called for short, has allowed for continued taxpayer-funded bailouts and crippled Main Street businesses and community financial institutions.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was as an emotional response to one of our nation’s most trying economic times. Nearly six years later it has proven to be an expensive blanket of one-size fits all rules on the private sector written by Washington bureaucrats, some of whom have never spent one day of their adult life outside of government.

The start of May reminds us all that summer is around the corner.

Students are preparing for final exams. Calendars are filling with family outings and weddings.

For the two of us, it means the beginning of baseball practices at sunrise in preparation for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity.

Our mutual love of baseball is not the only thing the two of us have in common. We’ve both owned small businesses.

This first week of May is Small Business Week.

It honors the foundation of our country’s workforce.

In 1939 a young man opened a car dealership to realize the American dream. He built his business up from nothing. He worked hard and he created jobs.

He developed a good reputation in his community – so much so that he was asked to supply the cars during President John Kennedy’s tragic visit to Texas in November 1963.

Deficits are down and the stock market is up – that premature victory chant by President Barack Obama couldn’t be further from the truth today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has plunged more than 2,000 points from its high, and according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government is projected to spend 544 billion dollars more than it will take in this fiscal year alone.

This week, President Obama is going around the country to re-hash some of the themes from his State of the Union. I have a better idea: how about he start apologizing for the last seven years?

I’ve decided to help the president by highlighting some of the lowlights that he should address. I’ve also taken the liberty of assisting the president’s speech writers by putting this in a speech format for him:

I have always said that I believe the role of government is to defend the borders, build infrastructure, collect our taxes and then get out of the way. Under President Obama, we have witnessed an executive branch that refuses to enforce immigration law but has expanded government like never before while our roads and bridges crumble beneath us.