Hillsdale College Professor Testifies Before U.S. House Financial Services Committee
Dr. Matthew Spalding speaks on the five-year impact of the Dodd-Frank Act
HILLSDALE, Mich., Sept. 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillsdale College Associate Vice President and Dean of Educational Programs at the Kirby Center Dr. Matthew Spalding testified today before the Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives at a hearing titled "The Dodd-Frank Act Five Years Later: Are We More Free?" His testimony occurred on the 228th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution.
"The very meaning and structure of our Constitution embody the great foundational principles of the rule of law," Spalding said in prepared testimony to the committee. "It is fair to say that the rule of law may be the most significant and influential accomplishment of the long history of human liberty. And yet here we are today, covered by a vast web of rules and regulations, endless policies and programs, all emanating from government, mostly the work of vast agencies and bureaucracies that largely operate outside our rule of law structure."
He added, "In assuming more and more tasks in more and more areas for which it is less and less accountable, modern government has done great damage to American liberty and self-government."
Spalding critiqued modern government's overreaching regulation and concluded that, "We should all – Republicans and Democrats alike – recognize and fear this new state of things, whether it takes the particular form of Dodd-Frank Act or any other policy matter coming from the Left or the Right. If the administrative rule now threatening to overwhelm American society becomes the undisputed norm — accepted not only among the academic and political elites, but also by the American people, as the defining characteristic of the modern state — it could well mark the end of our great experiment in self-government."
Spalding's full testimony is available online at http://www.hillsdale.edu/pr/9-17-15-spalding-congressional-testimony.
Spalding oversees the operations of the Washington, D.C.-based Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship and the various academic and educations programs of Hillsdale College in the nation's capital. He is the best-selling author of We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, and the executive editor of The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, a line-by-line analysis of each clause of the U.S. Constitution.
About Hillsdale College
Hillsdale College, founded in 1844, has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a circulation of more than 2.9 million.
SOURCE Hillsdale College
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