Think tanks Quotes

The Obama Tax Plan Would Eliminate Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs Each Year….In other words, for Americans who are unemployed now, their prospects of employment would worsen under the Obama tax plan.

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The Heritage Foundation's study “Obama Tax Hikes: The Economic and Fiscal Effects".

A closer look at the unemployment [nearly 10 percent unemployment rate] suggests that minimum wage laws also deserve a big share of the blame….businesses are not charities and that they only create jobs when they think a worker will generate net revenue. Higher minimum wages, needless to say, are especially destructive for people with poor work skills and limited work experience.

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Dan Mitchell, senior fellow, Cato Institute.
06/15/2010 | Full Details | Law(s): Minimum Wage

The Dodd bill would push the government into the business of dictating the terms at which consumers and businesses can contract. This has nothing to do with protecting consumers and everything to do with replacing consumer preferences with bureaucrats’ choices.

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“Dodd’s Job-killer”, by Mark A. Calabria

The important question, however, is not the default rates on the mortgages made under the CRA. Whatever those rates might be, they were not sufficient to cause a worldwide financial crisis. Once these standards were relaxed--particularly allowing loan-to-value ratios higher than the 80 percent that had previously been the norm--they spread rapidly to the prime market and to subprime markets where loans were made by lenders other than insured banks.

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Peter Wallison, AEI Online

…the government has used regulatory and political pressure to force banks and other government-controlled or regulated private entities to make loans they would not otherwise make and to reduce lending standards so more applicants would have access to mortgage financing… the CRA was used to pressure banks into making loans they would not otherwise have made and to adopt looser lending standards that would make mortgage loans possible for individuals who could not meet the down payment and other standards that had previously been applied routinely by banks and other housing lenders... a law that was originally intended to encourage banks to use safe and sound practices in lending now required them to be innovative and flexible--a clear requirement for the relaxation of lending standards.

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Peter Wallison, AEI Online

The CRA has created opportunities for rent seeking and financial and logistical burdens for all lenders. The Act forces lenders to spend money, time, and resources on documentation, PR, and other compliance costs.

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Michelle Minton, Competitive Enterprise Institute

The CRA, by encouraging loosening underwriting standards, may have contributed to the massive increase in foreclosure rates.

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Michelle Minton, Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Community Reinvestment Act does not appear to have had any positive effect on lending to residents of LMI neighborhoods. In fact, it appears to have had a negative effect on CRA lenders and LMI residents alike… While both CRA- and non-CRA lenders have increased the number of loans to low-income borrowers, the financial soundness of CRA-covered institutions decreases the better they conform to the CRA.

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Michelle Minton, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Maryland legislators’ good intentions do not change the fact that living wages result in job loss, particularly among the less skilled and less educated.

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Jenkins, Jill, Employment Policy Institute.
09/28/2007 | Full Details | Law(s): Living Wage

By contrast, the dissent’s argument that a discrimination plaintiff can sue based on each paycheck she receives, if her current paycheck was somehow affected by discrimination in the distant past, would allow plaintiffs to sue based on discrimination that occurred decades before, even if the employer is innocent, the alleged discriminators have all died, and the employer no longer has access to any evidence that could vindicate it…That is fundamentally unfair, and at odds with the whole purpose of having a statute of limitations.

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute.

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