Posted on 07/20/2007 8:06:04 AM PDT by BGHater
Audit Trail recently sat down with 2008 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, R-TX, to get his views on Sarbanes-Oxley 5 Years Later, as one of only three members of congress at the time to vote against the bill.
Audit Trail: It has been five years since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley. Has your initial position on the legislation changed, or do you still believe it was an overreaction to a real problem?
Ron Paul: The damage inflicted on American businesses and capitol markets by Sarbanes-Oxley has strengthened my conviction that this legislation should be repealed. In 2000, nine of every ten dollars raised by foreign companies were raised in the United States. In 2005, nine of the ten largest offerings were not registered in the United States, and, of the largest twenty-five global offerings, only one took place in the US. The number of public companies going private increased from 143 in 2001 to 245 in 2004. Sarbanes-Oxley is a, if not the, major reason companies are fleeing America’s capital markets. Furthermore, according to some estimates, Sarbanes-Oxley has cost the very investors the law claims to protect at least $1.4 trillion. How could anyone regret voting against such a harmful bill?
AT: What has been most surprising to you as you look at what has happened since Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted?
RP: The solid consensus that today exists among Representatives of both parties and the regulatory bodies charged with enforcing Sarbanes-Oxley is that this legislation, which Congress overwhelmingly passed and the administration heralded as a great achievement, was poorly drafted and that small businesses need relief from the unintended consequences of the law.
AT: Do you think the recent changes that the SEC and PCAOB have made with respect to SOX 404 will be successful in easing the burden of compliance? Do they go far enough?
RP: No, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new regulations implementing Section 404 do not go nearly far enough in lifting the unjustified burdens Sarbanes-Oxley imposed on America’s economy.
Sarbanes-Oxley expert John Berlau, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said of the new rule that “Simply proclaiming that audits should be ‘risk-based’ won’t make them so, as long as the other mandates of this auditing standard remain in place. Auditors and companies will still face potential liability for not looking at every last process that could be deemed an ‘internal control,’ even if it has little relevance for shareholders. And the big accounting firms will also still have the big incentive to find every last ‘internal control’ they can audit and bill for.”
Of course, the regulators can only go so far in relieving the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley; it is up to Congress to correct the mistake it made when it rushed this unconstitutional, anti-prosperity, and anti-liberty bill into law.
AT: Is Sarbanes-Oxley still top of mind for you? Do you follow developments closely?
RP: Reform, or even repeal, of Sarbanes-Oxley remains one of my top priorities. As a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, I intend to continue to be an active participant in the debate over Sarbanes-Oxley and similar legislation.
Actually I think that you folks wasting all your time glamorizing and promoting this Ron Paul nut will hurt the efforts to defeat Hillary Clinton. A Ron Paul candidacy is a fantasy. We need to fight Clinton in the real world folks. I know - I know you love Ron Paul, but its not going to work. Reality bites sometimes.
Let's pretend I don't. The next question is if I know how to use the internet.
Paul’s comments on SOX mean nothing if he has no credibility.
Are you one of Rudy’s Rooters that the Mods missed? Trying to get some “pay back” on a real conservative candidate?
My worst nightmare would be pulling the lever for Rudy so as to not allow our foreign policy to be again hijacked by Klintons.
“I’m withya on Thompson and also don’t rule out Romney.
My worst nightmare would be pulling the lever for Rudy so as to not allow our foreign policy to be again hijacked by Klintons.”
Here is the thing about the Ron Paul supporters (and I agree with them on this) they (including me) are tired of “Republican Lite” we really do not want to vote for the “least worst option” like Rudy, they (and maybe me) would prefer to vote for Ron Paul, even though he more then likely won’t win, then to vote for a Democrat in Republican’s clothing.
If we are too be screwed either way, it is better to have the screwing come from a Democrat, then a Republican that is supposedly “on OUR side” doing things like raising taxes or banning firearms.
Ron Paul’s stances defien the differences between the two parties, we need that now more then any time since 1980.
I’m a realist who doesn’t want to see people wasting time on a candidate who cannot win while the Clintons move back into the White House. No favorite yet - I have 2 - 3 that I kind of like on our side, but I haven’t picked one yet. It is way too early for that. But I have eliminated Paul, and McCain and some of those other minor players who don’t have a snowball’s chance.
So you’ve eliminated Rudy as well?
Financially, how are we going to pay for our foreign policy. The money to do so simply does not exist, which is why we're having to borrow absolutely incredible amounts of money yearly (heck even daily) just to finance what we're doing now.
No matter what you think of the current foreign policy, it doesn't really matter. The money is going to run out sooner or later anyway.
Well now that you put it that way, lets allow our well funded enemies to annihilate us and get it over with.
< /rolling eyes in sarcasm >
But in all seriousness, how are we going to pay for it?
I'm sure all failed states in the history of mankind harbored such self defeating and suicidal thinking such as your "how are we going to pay for it" surrender mentality.
That still doesn’t answer the question, and like it or not that is a question that will HAVE to be answered. We cannot spend endlessly. It must come from somewhere. Where?
Wealth in a free market is not stagnant. In a country like ours, wealth increases.
Do you make the same today that you did 10 years ago? I'm sure the US treasury is the same.
Neither is inflation in costs. Though our salaries go up, we can't necessarily buy more because the costs of purchasing items (even necessary ones) go up as well, often proportionately. I would imagine this is the same with the costs of the weapons, ships, aircraft and munitions and such that the military has to manufacture or purchase in order to function. That's not to mention the raised cost of fuels and such which have exploded in the last ten years. The military must take that into account as well.
Basically what I'm saying is that we're already TRILLIONS of dollars in debt and cannot even afford to pay the debt we have now. With that said, there's no way we can afford any more debt.
Our defense strategy is to do more with less. Keeping actual dollar and human cost as low as possible, while achieving precise and overwhelming victory.
The government to will change, people will finally get fed up. (and FED up)
Sad thing is, it’s a damned cycle...
That would be a financially reasonable strategy were it not for the fact that it's not actually being implemented well at all. This I think is evidenced by the Department of Defense's own long range forecast of military spending for not only this year but also the coming three years. (See www.defenselink.mil and look up "budget" and you can find this pdf file.) They project that over the next four years (2008-2011) our military spending requests may reach nearly 2 trillion dollars. (See Table 1-2 of the official published projected budget on the DoD website referenced above which was put out by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense in March 2006.)
Add this nearly 2 trillion dollars to our current national debt of $8,897,854,185,086.96 (as per the Bureau of the Public Debt website on www.treasurydirect.gov), and we've got ourselves a recipe for national financial disaster---especially considering that that does not even include what we will be spending domestically.
Basically, we are spending ourselves into financial disaster, and that cannot go on very long either in our domestic programs or abroad.
Paul appears right last year.
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