Sarbanes-Oxley Kills Jobs? Mitt Romney & Newt Gingrich Think We're All Fools

Posted by Teresa Bockwoldt on March 13, 2012

AnnouncementMitt Romney is suggesting that investors rely on Corporate America to 'do the right thing' and not steal, overstate earnings, lie to line their own pockets, etc. even though this thinking has been proven inaccurate over-and-over again.

Even with Sarbanes-Oxley in place, these types of scandals still exist and he, along with Newt Gingrich, are suggesting that we do away with the requirement for public companies to have internal controls. Internal controls that are in place to prove financial statements are accurate, reliable, and that help fight fraud and the possibility of theft of shareholder assets.

My suggestion; let's apply Romney's thinking to his own camp. I'll come in and give all the interns, staff, volunteers, etc. an ATM card and check stock to his campaign contribution account. According to his thinking, everything would be OK, there is nothing to fear, and forcing checks and balances throughout his internal procedures is a waste of time and a job killer (?). According to him, Corporate America should not be required to provide proof that their numbers are accurate - it is a waste of money and time. Newt Gingrich even said that repealing Sarbanes-Oxley is a matter of life or death! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX601cl841g&context=C458b5c4ADvjVQa1PpcFPlTV4IGQ2JlF3l0p1Jr778cCyFWKh1MFk=

Neither of them has obviously spent time in the trenches of an accounting department trying to produce financials for stakeholders, investing public, and/or the SEC. They are suggesting that guessing on these numbers is sufficient.

Every number in a financial statement is the result of an internal control – without exception. Moreover, Mitt & Newt are saying that spending the money and time on making sure these numbers are accurate isn’t valuable. They are saying that trusting CEO’s and CFO’s to produce financial statements based on faith is the right thing to do. I say, they are out of their minds.

Here is a suggestion to see if they will eat their own dog food; we’ll remove the need to have expense reports reviewed to ensure they are accurate and legitimate. We’ll remove the requirement to have supportable financial accounting of their expenses and verification that they used their campaign contributions according to law since, according to them, there is nothing to fear. Everything will just be based on trust. In fact, we’ll pay for the privilege to do this work. Vibato LLC will pay Mitt Romney & Newt Gingrich $10,000 to allow us to come in and strip his camp of all their internal controls (Sarbanes-Oxley) - which they do now have (whether they admit it or not) - and see how well it works for them before they inflict this irrational type of thinking on investors. If this level of thinking is good enough for investors and the American public, shouldn’t it also be good enough for their own camps or is this just something they would do to us and exclude themselves?

We've already been the victims and guinea pigs of Corporate America and their greed, and Mitt and Newt are advocating that we should continue to be gullible fools....have we learned nothing from all of this? According to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, all we've learned to do is kill jobs....I wonder what ex-employees of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, etc. would have to say about that? (Hint: They all lost their jobs, and a lot of investor's money, due to a LACK of internal controls).

Read more about his stance here:

Romney Would Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley


Updated: Sunday, 04 Mar 2012, 12:35 PM EST
Published : Sunday, 04 Mar 2012, 12:35 PM EST


(Wall Street Journal) - Mitt Romney pledged during a campaign event Saturday to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accounting overhaul.


After Romney vowed to repeal President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law, a voter in the crowd asked whether his list of repeals would include Sarbanes-Oxley, as well.


"Yes," Romney said. "People who have spent their life in Washington in many cases ... don't understand that when they write a piece of legislation what kind of impact that's going to have in the private sector, how many people's lives will be affected by it."
Romney's 59-point economic plan offers a more modest proposal to deal with the law. It includes a line item to amend the law "to relieve mid-size companies from onerous requirements."


The candidate took his plans a step further this weekend. "These legislative monsters that have been created kill jobs," Romney said.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law, passed in 2002 after a spate of accounting scandals, toughens those standards for companies. Many businesses have complained that the new requirements are onerous and costly.

Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpps/money/romney-would-repeal-sarbanes-oxley-dpgonc-km-20120304_18361144#.T19qV591Sro.twitter#ixzz1p1FMhAek

Tags: Internal Controls, SOX, internal control, Sarbanes-Oxley, Internal Control Education