Sen. Hutchison Speaks at TAMACC's 36th Annual Latina Empowerment Luncheon

U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) spoke at the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce's 36th Annual Latina Empowerment Luncheon about the need to stop the overregulation hurting businesses and the U.S. economy. Below are excerpts of her remarks:

I have a great Hispanic Advisory Group, made up of leaders in our communities, of office holders in our communities, and business leaders. I appreciate so much the valuable advice that I have had from that advisory committee: on small business issues, the immigration issues, the education issues, and more. The ideas and advice from my committee members have been invaluable during my time in the Senate. I want to thank all, including the many leaders in this room, who have helped me to understand important issues.

Speaking of the education area, one of the things that we've done that I think has been immensely successful - with my partner on the House side, Ruben Hinojosa of the [Rio Grande] Valley -- [is that] we were able to take Hispanic-serving institutions, and really focus more on what they can do, and on the individual needs of so many of our Hispanic students, who are often the first members of their families to go to college. When we started, right around 1998, we worked, and we got $12 million for Hispanic-serving institutions to put to use. But then we found out that there was such a big need, and we needed to shape the criteria, so we did that to make it easier to get these needed funds. And now we're hovering around $100 million annually for our Hispanic-serving institutions. And I know that this has done some real good -- especially for those first-term young people who've never had the role models for college education.

I'm glad to be here, especially for the Latinas, and the celebration of Latina business leadership. We know that the small businesses that are being started by Latinas are [among] the fastest growing sector of small businesses in our country, and this is a great thing. When I graduated from law school, no law firm in Texas hired women. Well, things have changed so much -- I ended up then looking for a new avenue, like so many have. And when one door closes, something else opens, and I became a television news reporter. I never really intended to go into politics, but I was covering politics, and I thought I could do it. I ran for the Texas Legislature and was able to win, and then start on a different career than I had ever thought -- and now I could probably get a job in a law firm in the future. So I think that good things happen some times in circuitous ways.

I have also enjoyed so much being in small business, because before I was elected State Treasurer I was a small business owner. I said, "I'm going to work 12 hours a day for myself so I can avoid working 9-5 for somebody else.' Well, that's what so many small business people feel, and I know that so many of you do, too: you work hours and hours, 24/7 really, but that's in order to build something of your own and hopefully something that you can pass to your children, like many of you in this room are doing.

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Right now our biggest concern, of course, is the economy. As you, the business leaders -- some of you are in big business, some of you are in small business -- but as we are looking at this economy, it's among the worst times that I've ever seen, and certainly since the Great Depression. I believe the reason that small businesses aren't hiring, and that big businesses aren't hiring as much as they normally would, is not because of bad luck, which is what President Obama said a few days ago. It's not bad luck, it's bad policy. It is the bad policy coming out of Washington. It is the over-regulation, the over-taxation, and the looming costs and complexities of the new health care law from Washington, that is causing a near-freeze on new employment. We will not have a recovery with 9.1 percent unemployment. So what are we going to do to get employment going again?

Well, we've got to back off the heavy hand of Washington, back off talking about new, job-killing taxes as a "balanced approach" to getting our deficit down. We don't need new taxes, we need to cut spending. A growth sector in this country in the last two years has been government. It has been more government in the regulatory agencies. Just this year - that we're about 9 months into - 50,000 new pages of federal regulations have been put in the Federal Register. 50,000 pages! Think about what that means to your business. There is something in there that you may not even know about yet, that is going to be yet another hurdle for you to try to get over, to get your business into compliance with, so that you can actually run your business and start hiring people. More regulation is not what we need.

Let me give you some examples. We have new rules for coal-fired power plants which will drive up electricity costs in Texas. There are rules that have caused a virtual halt on energy development in the United States, driving up the price of gasoline, which we all know. There is an [effort] to prohibit investments in manufacturing plants, targeting South Carolina right now, because it's a right-to-work state. So now, the heavy hand of the federal government -- the Obama Administration -- through the National Labor Relations Board, is going to take up whether Boeing can add jobs at the plant that it has built in South Carolina, because that might be a movement against the labor unions. Well, you know what? Boeing needs to be able to build its plant where it is most economically feasible. They need to be able to go to a right-to-work state like Texas or South Carolina, if that's where they want to go. People can still form unions in our states, but we are a right-to-work state, and we need to protect the people who decide not to [join a union.].

Nationwide, there are endless ribbons of federal red tape; we need to go back in the other direction. The FCC is looking at regulating the internet - that's a solution that doesn't have a problem. The internet is working. Why would we have the heavy hand of the FCC come in and tell AT&T or Verizon that they need to now go through the channel of an FCC approval to change anything that they do? I don't think that's right. I don't think we need it. That's one thing that is working in our country. And all of it means more costs, more costs to our small businesses.

So I think what we need to do is start wringing out those unnecessary regulations. Let's stop the new regulations. Let's put a moratorium on them for the next year, and see if that might open up some of the business opportunities and hiring in our country. How about passing my bill, which is called the Save Our States Act, which would put a moratorium on the implementation of the health care reform bill until we know if it's unconstitutional, which I hope that it is. Let's just put a moratorium on all the costs that the states are putting forward, and that businesses are putting forward, to implement a bill that may be unconstitutional. Financially stressed states are spending billions of dollars collectively to implement this law [which may be overturned].

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That's not what we need. What we need is easier access to healthcare insurance, not mandates from the federal government that will keep you from offering health insurance to your employees because the federal government is making it so expensive with all of its rules, and regulations, and red tape.

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I will be working with your leaders to try to cut back on all of the dampers that the federal government is putting on business and our country. The Chamber is a great representative of the business of our country. And we have the U.S. Hispanic Chamber, but also [that] of Texas. You do a great job of representing the business interests because so many of the Hispanic businesses are small businesses, and they're the ones that get hit the hardest. It is a fact...that small businesses are hit harder by regulations than big businesses are. And thank goodness we're getting more and more Hispanic representation in our big businesses, as well. But we've got to open it up to our small businesses because that's the economic engine of America. That's what starts small and grows big, and that's how we keep our economy vibrant.

The bad economy is not bad luck, it is bad policy. And we can do something about it. And that's what I want to do in my last year and one-half in office: to make sure that we have the policies, that we pull back from the heavy hand of government and let our small businesses know that they're not going to have regulatory excess, they're not going to have new taxes. They're being taxed enough, thank you very much. And that hopefully, we can put a moratorium on this healthcare reform, and let our small businesses do what they can do, because they want to have health care for their employees. But when you put the federal mandates and standards and regulations in place, that's what is going to hurt small businesses. And let's let small business grow and thrive - that's what will get our economy going.

So, thank you all so much for being out there in the arena. You're the ones who are making our country great, and I appreciate you very much. And I appreciate all that you've done working with me through the years to make life better in our country for our small businesses and our families. That should be our goal from now on. Thank you so much.

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