[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7899-7900]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             BAD DECISIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to talk 
about a couple of unrelated topics, except that they both are examples 
of officials in positions of power overreacting to situations and 
making very bad decisions as a result.
  Mr. Speaker, when I read that a 5-year-old boy in Calvert County, 
Maryland, had been suspended from school for 10 days simply for showing 
a toy cap gun to his friend on the school bus, I was shocked and 
saddened. I became even sadder when I read the little boy was 
questioned for over 2 hours by school officials before his parents were 
called, and the boy uncharacteristically wet his pants during this 
interrogation. His mother said later this boy was all boy and all about 
rocks, frogs, and cowboys.
  This interrogation was ridiculous, and a 10-day suspension was 
ridiculous overkill. I wondered if these school officials who did this 
to this little boy had lost their common sense and human decency. I am 
now pleased that the situation has been partially rectified by cutting 
the 10-day suspension back to the 3 days he has already served, and I 
hope the parents' request to remove the incident from the boy's school 
records are granted.
  Rigid one-size-fits-all solutions almost never work and frequently 
lead to

[[Page 7900]]

very bad, very unfair solutions. I hope that school boards all across 
this country will at least come to their senses and do away with so-
called ``zero tolerance policies,'' especially when it comes to very 
small children, and especially 5-year-old boys who simply want to be 
boys.
  A second topic that I wanted to mention today, Mr. Speaker, is about 
the Dodd-Frank law. The Dodd-Frank law has produced many thousands of 
pages of rules, regulations, and red tape in a misguided attempt to 
rein in abuses by some of the Nation's biggest banks; however, as is 
the case with most Federal regulations, this law ended up hurting the 
smallest banks in this Nation and, thus, helping the big banks to get 
even bigger.
  Listen to these words from a columnist from the Washington Times:

       It's been 3 years since the Senate passed the Dodd-Frank 
     financial reform legislation.
       So far, the effects are not what Washington promised. More 
     than 200 smaller banks have failed in the wake of Dodd-Frank.
       Does it comfort them that politicians proclaim smaller 
     banks were exempt from the market distortions lawmakers 
     created?
       Since community banks are being forced to stay below the 
     asset threshold forced on them by Dodd-Frank, they are 
     lending less and making less.
       This further strains banks and limits job growth.
       We have learned once again that whenever Washington 
     announces new regulations, hold on to your wallet.

  Increasing Federal regulations, Mr. Speaker, always end up helping 
extremely Big Business, but makes it even harder for our smallest 
businesses to survive. We have this Big Government, Big Business 
duopoly in this Nation, and I hope those who continue to vote for 
bigger and bigger government realize that all they're really helping 
are the extremely big giants in any industry and they're hurting the 
small- and medium-sized businesses. I hope that this trend will at 
least slow down so we don't run more small- and medium-sized businesses 
out of existence in this Nation.
  Now, finally, as I hadn't intended to say anything, Mr. Speaker, but 
my friend, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones), spoke about 
the very unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was 100 percent 
correct. I admire his courage in speaking out in the way that he has 
done.
  Unfortunately, the Armed Services Committee is about to produce a 
bill that continues this war funding at the rate of $85 billion for the 
war in Afghanistan just to continue in other overseas situations like 
in Iraq where we happen to have had the most deadly month in May that 
we've had in several years.
  The situations are not getting better, and this country will be far 
better off when we start putting our own people and our own country 
first and stop trying to be the policemen for the world and start doing 
things that need to be done in this country.

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