Romney, Toughening Stance, Would Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley

By Sara Murray

DAYTON, Ohio—Mitt Romney pledged during a campaign event Saturday to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accounting overhaul.
After Mr. 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,” Mr. 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.”


Mr. 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,” Mr. Romney said.
The Sarbanes-Oxley law, passed in 2002 after a spate of accounting scandals, toughens accounting standards for companies. Many businesses have complained that the new requirements are onerous and costly.
Saturday’s town hall was otherwise devoted to answering questions on his economic policy ideas and his plans to beef up the U.S. military.
A woman described her daughter’s service in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. She said the second tour of duty is taking a toll on her daughter, who feels like she doesn’t understand her mission or why she’s there.
The question prompted Mr. Romney to lay out his vision of a successful mission in Afghanistan and criticize the president’s handling of the war.
“How in the world can the commander in chief sleep at night knowing that we have soldiers in harm’s way that don’t know exactly, precisely, what it is that they’re doing there,” Mr. Romney said.
“That mission is to pass along to Afghanistan a security force there that is capable of maintaining the sovereignty of that nation such that we can get out–they have the capacity to build their own nation,” Mr. Romney continued. “We will not be able to hand on a silver platter their freedom. They will have to fight for that, earn it, keep the Taliban from taking it away from them. But we’ve given them that opportunity.”