[The bill would ensure] ‘Another vast Federal bureaucracy’ with an annual budget beginning at more than $1 million and the addition of 240 employees to Uncle Sam’s payroll. The organization suggests the ladies pursue their crusade through the collective bargaining process, rather than through legislation.
I submit, however, that no man who himself has any practical acquaintance with business processes and methods who is not utterly blinded by partisan political considerations can examine the Securities Act, the Stock Exchange Act, the successive revenue acts in recent years, the Social Security Act, the Public Utilities Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act and many of the arbitrary regulations devised under a dozen other recent acts and arrive at any verdict other than they cripple and retard business rather than help revive it. The fact is even so clear that it is hard to keep from wondering if such a result were not actually intended.
Too long have we introduced carelessly into the stream of our national life alien philosophies of government control and foreign ideas of repression of the individual that have no place in this land of freedom. It is time to rout them out. It is time for all of us to realize that we want and intend to have for our own and later generations the American pattern of life and the American freedom of opportunity which these foreign ideas and theories and plans have been shouldering out of the picture.
If the provisions of the bill now pending should be adopted, the country should realize that within a decade there will be a tax burden amounting to as much as $1 billion.
In other countries, the problem is handled by taking the necessary sum each year from the current taxes. Otherwise the load would get so big as to be a menace. On the other hand, if industry is burdened with too heavy taxes, the result may be more unemployment in the future, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
No rule of thumb method ... can be devised which will fit all securities in all situations....It would produce even greater injury than the Federal Securities Act in retarding or preventing the follow of securities into new and refunding issues, which are indispensable if employment is to be maintained and increased and the huge burden on the Treasury is to be relieved.
The costs of this action would be enormous and obviously could have a disastrous impact upon many small businesses struggling to survive.