Jason Smith: “The American people have been misled. They were incorrectly told that Dodd-Frank was meant to go after big banks and…”

“The American people have been misled. They were incorrectly told that Dodd-Frank was meant to go after big banks and Wall Street. However, in my rural congressional district, the effects of this law and its close to 500 regulations have been devastating. The total economic cost of Dodd-Frank-based regulations has eclipsed $35 billion and over 60 million hours of paperwork burdens. That is the equivalent of 30,000 employees a year dedicated solely to regulatory paperwork. A new army of regulators aren't the kind of jobs that Americans were promised. The biggest and most costly regulation to come out of Dodd-Frank is the deceptively named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an unconstitutional, uncontrollable, and unaccountable agency whose total negative impact on our economy won't be known for decades. The CFPB was supposed to protect consumers from the predatory practices of financial institutions. Instead, it has limited Americans' access to credit, the ability to be financially independent, and impeded the availability of homes and, in this case, cars. The CFPB achieved this by hiring big, spending big, and regulating big. The CFPB started with a staff of 178 in 2011 but now has close to 2,000 employees. In that same period, its annual spending grew from $10 million to, now, $600 million. The safest place to find a job in this government economy is with a Federal financial regulator.…”