Building A Financial System that Rewards Investment, Empowers the Middle Class, and Provides a Pathway Towards Prosperity
We must work to increase financial inclusion and advance opportunity, especially in underrepresented communities. American innovation and work ethic created the world’s most prosperous economy, so it is long past time that we have a financial sector that better fosters these traits. Unfortunately, the current Administration has taken a different approach – increasing red tape across the financial system, making it more difficult for everyday Americans to compete, while stifling growth with higher taxes. This Administration’s far-left progressive policy agenda has only discouraged innovation and entrepreneurship while fueling inflation.
To ensure that all Americans can enjoy financial stability and to encourage financial inclusion, we should enact needed improvements in the banking and housing sectors while also ensuring that U.S. companies, large and small, can continue to compete on a level playing field globally.
Reducing Regulations Blocking Access to Financial Success
Millions of American families are under-banked or credit invisible. A more expansive and dynamic credit scoring model would help to bring these families into the banking system. This would promote increased access to credit, enabling a roadmap to financial independence for all Americans. New credit scoring models that allow for reporting of alternative sets of financial data, including rent payments, utilities, or cell phone bills to the credit bureaus must be instituted and properly integrated into our regulatory system.
Recently enacted layers of red-tape, record high inflation, and skyrocketing housing costs are killing jobs and limiting opportunities for American families. We must undo the radical bureaucratic excesses of the current Administration, such as by permanently blocking efforts to use the IRS to snoop on the private bank account information of American taxpayers. Plans for intrusive reporting and vastly increased paperwork requirements are unnecessary, wasteful and violate the privacy rights of our citizens. The Department of Energy has also proposed new regulations that would add thousands of dollars in new costs for affordable housing construction to satisfy the demands of climate activists.
Time and again, the Biden Administration and its federal agencies have demonstrated their willingness to promote a progressive agenda outside the bounds of their statutory authority. Agencies should not be used as a tool against those politically disfavored by the Administration.
Reduce inflation
During the last two years, the Biden Administration ushered in harmful and excessive spending on a strictly partisan basis. This spending has contributed to some of the worst inflation this country has seen in decades. It is critical that we ensure that federal spending is reined in and that we reduce any further waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars by this Administration.
Increasing Access to Capital Formation and Fostering Innovation
Entrepreneurs and small businesses across the nation are truly the back-bone of our economy, and their benefits are seen across every community. Under the current Administration, the climate for innovation has never been worse. Some in Washington are afraid of new technology or financial innovation, worried that they might lose some of their control over virtually all segments of the American economy. For small businesses to expand, better access to financial institutions, innovative products, and capital formation is a must and should not be hampered by unnecessary regulations designed for large corporations.
Enabling Financial Success
Financial literacy is a critical building block to ensuring financial independence and prosperity for Americans of all backgrounds and demographics. Understanding basic financial products from savings and checking accounts to mortgage loans and retirement investments will provide American families with the tools they need for success. We must encourage efforts to provide everyone access to financial literacy tools.
Protecting U.S. National and Economic Security
The global economic landscape has shifted in recent years. Adversarial nations are increasingly turning to economic tools as a way of influencing global policy. The U.S. must evaluate its toolkit to ensure economic sanctions, illicit finance protections, and export controls continue to reflect U.S. national security interests.
We can combat the country’s fentanyl crisis by targeting the illicit fentanyl supply chain, from the chemical suppliers in China to the cartels that traffic the drugs in from Mexico.
We can advance our national security by undoing the disastrous efforts to embrace Iran and further develop sanctions to restrain their dangerous nuclear ambitions and other malign activities that seek to harm the U.S. and our allies.
Responsibly Advancing Housing Opportunity
The cost of housing has sky-rocketed in recent years, making it more difficult for American families to access homeownership, a key driver of financial independence. Effective housing policy is driven by communities—it is critically important the federal government encourages local solutions to uniquely local problems. We must undertake a comprehensive view of federal housing policy, introducing long-needed reforms across all segments of the U.S. housing market. Homelessness programs and housing grants need to be reevaluated and judged on their success in ending problems, not just spending taxpayer money.
Updating and reforming our financial system will unleash new strengths and wealth generation for our families.