STRAIGHT TALK
Politics; Bah-Humbug Congress Deals Banks a Setback
T
here seems to be a sea change, at least here in Kentucky, against politics as usual. Governor Matt Bevin’s election was the “shot across the bow.” It was surprising to me and devastating to others. Growing up in Kentucky I’ve always wondered why we vote Republican in national elections and Democratic in local and state elections. I always felt that the reason was that most every Democrat in Kentucky would be a Republican up North.
In other words, our Democrats (for the most part) are fiscal conservatives and social moderates, so they vote Republican in Presidential and national elections because they think that’s where it really matters. However, what happens when as a favor we vote for our buddies in state and local elections without regard to their political beliefs. Evidently you get a state whose public employee pension has the worst deficit in the United States (-$19B), signing on to Obamacare Medicaid expansion at a cost in 2017 of $200+M (not to mention the normal growth in Medicaid that will be over $200M) and an antiquated business tax and work environment. It was Margaret Thatcher who said, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Governor Bevin will be the first to tell you that he didn’t carry 111 counties out of 120 because everyone loved him. No, it was because the people of Kentucky said they want a change in leadership. That seems to be the same message we are hearing nationally. Who would have ever thought Donald Trump would be securing 35% of the vote in a Republican primary! He has evidently hit upon a nerve in the American people that is saying “ENOUGH!” We don’t seem to have politicians in the truest sense of the word anymore. What we have are job hunters, people who got elected telling the public what they want to hear and then immediately begin to play the Potomac-get-ahead game, which believes if I do what leadership tells me to do instead of what my constituents need me to do, I’ll get ahead.
“We need Statesmen not politicians” Now not all politicians are like that, but enough are to be in the majority. We need Statesmen not politicians. To that end I would tell you, I always admired politicians who had the integrity to vote against leadership when they knew through their own intel-
lectual compass that leadership was wrong. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to stand against the tide, but then again those are the men and women that history will remember, not the “Jell-O– shot” politicians who went along to get along just to stay out of the heat of the kitchen. That’s how this country has gotten into the shape it is in, and how this state got into the shape it’s in. One such Jell-O-shot example is Congressman Yarmuth. I like John Yarmuth because most of the time he truly believes in what he is supporting. I don’t happen to agree with his beliefs (actually none of them), but I respect his reasoning process. However, I don’t know if you noticed what I have, he has NEVER voted with banking. Not once. He has never voted with banking, and yet we have banks that still support his candidacy! I made a special trip to Washington just to speak to Congressman Yarmuth about Congressman Andy Barr’s portfolio lending bill. I explained that it would allow community banks to help their customers by making mortgage loans outside QM standards, only if they house them in their own portfolio and take all the risk internally. In other words, if the loan went bad it wouldn’t hurt anyone except the bank, thus insuring strong underwriting. I explained to Congressman Yarmuth how the loan guidelines in Dodd-Frank have crippled lending in rural America. That this would help get money back out into the local communities so banks could make good character loans again. He politely listened and stated he didn’t see any reason to oppose such legislation, and he even asked if the rest of the Kentucky delegation was for it, to which I responded yes, they were. After about a 20-minute visit I left Rep. Yarmuth’s office thinking, Yes, we will finally get him to support a good banking bill that helps citizens of Kentucky! Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Evidently Leader Nancy Pelosi and co-conspirator and Financial Services ranking member Maxine Waters sent the word out that Democrats were opposed to making any changes to Dodd-Frank; Yarmuth went along with the other lemmings in his party who voted blindly the party line. There were nine brave Democrats who voted with Representative Barr on this bill in a bi-partisan fashion and it passed. I just wish I could have said one of them was ours, but….
Ballard Cassady KBA President & CEO
What are your thoughts? bcassady@kybanks.com