With all the excitement and controversy going on about the election, it becomes necessary to do your own research. Today, we’re going to look past all the “he said, she said, he did this and she did that” to try to find something meaningful to us as responsible voters. Having created that goal, we want to look at where both main party candidates stand on the issues of Crowdfunding and P2P regulations.
Our first stop was the home domains for the respective candidates’ policies: Donald Trump’s site and Hillary Clinton’s site. After browsing through prospective categories that our two keywords and concerns could fall under, we didn’t find much. Sure, there were the typical, “We’ll change what’s currently wrong with the system,” types of proposals to regulations, but there were no hard stances on crowdfunding or peer to peer lending regulations to be found. Further research lead to a similar conclusion: we have yet to really hear either of these candidates talk on these important issues such as the Jobs Act (which neither of them were around for creating) or the Fix Crowdfunding Act currently in Congress. Thus, it is up to us to do a little conjecture about where they might stand or go in to the voter booth blind. Fortunately, one of our favorite resources, Crowdfund Insider, already did a lot of that work for us.
As far as Donald Trump goes, one might guess that he would be a fan of crowdfunding and peer to peer lending, given his investor/entrepreneur background. Additionally, he has affiliated with the crowdfunding platform, FundAnything for a time. While he no longer appears to be as enthusiastic about it as he used to be, we’re pretty sure he’s still pro-crowdfunding. However, we can’t really get any more specific than that.
In terms of Hillary Clinton’s position on crowdfunding, we know even less. She wasn’t serving in the Senate during the creation and subsequent
passing of the Jobs Act, nor are these issues particularly featured during the live debates that have been available for public viewing. Now, we know that, during the primaries, Hillary was pushed much further to the left on many issues by her opponent, Bernie Sanders. We do know that Sanders wasn’t much of a fan of the Jobs Act originally, but that he eventually came around; additionally, we do know that he is still influential in the party. Also, we know that Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, is a supporter of crowdfunding, thanks to his efforts with the Clinton Global Initiative. However, given their past and the simple fact that they are different people, it would be unfair to think that his views represent her views. Further, the progress that’s been made for the future of our industry has been made under the Obama administration, which Hillary is both a part of and endorsed by. Perhaps if we were to average these views or stances previously mentioned together, we might find ground closer to where Hillary stands?
Honestly though, it looks like, unless someone brings it up at the last debate, we aren’t truly going to know where either candidate stands until after they’ve been elected and begin to take action.
