Democrats Destroying Jobs...A Continuing Series

I've long advocated that Republicans focus on the job killing nature of regulations and I'm glad it's really taking hold. Unfortunately, I don't think the GOP presidential candidates quite have the hang of it yet.

Last night and at other times multiple candidates took shots at the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. That's a great start but most people haven't a clue what it is or why it's bad. Simply invoking the name isn't enough, candidates need to offer real world examples of how the Democratic regulatory regime is killing this country.

Fortunately for them, the Wall Street Journal gets it. They connect Bank of America's decision to cut 40,000 jobs in part to new rules in Dodd-Frank.

Mr. Durbin's amendment instructed the Federal Reserve to limit the amount of "swipe fees" that banks can charge merchants when customers use debit cards.

How exactly does forcing banks to charge Wal-Mart less money for operating an electronic payment system prevent the next financial crisis? Readers may wait a long time for a satisfactory answer, but the cost of this Dodd-Frank directive is straightforward.

The Fed dutifully ordered banks to cut their fees almost in half. Bank of America disclosed in its most recent quarterly report that this change will reduce the bank's debit-card revenues by $475 million in just the fourth quarter of this year. The new rules take effect on October 1, so BofA seems to have sensible timing as it begins to shed workers from a consumer business that has become suddenly less profitable by federal edict.

That might not be the best example because cutting fees will be popular but there are likely to be hundreds of such examples in Dodd-Frank alone. Toss in ObamaCare and you'll have a campaign season full of examples. But unless candidates make this stuff real tossing out Beltway terms will be meaningless to most voters.

Republicans in Congress would be wise to get on this as well, especially since they are in a position to actually do something about them. Start passing bills that repeal egregious job killing regulations and tell Obama he can't have any new debt funded "stimulus" to "create or save" jobs until his regulators stop killing them.

Make Obama and the Democrats OWN every bit of this economy and do it with examples that resonate with voters.

posted by DrewM. at 12:09 PM

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