Senator Scott: Why Business Experience Matters in Congress

After 25 years in the insurance business in the Charleston, South Carolina area, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) understands firsthand the concerns of independent agents and brokers.

Prior to his political career, Senator Scott owned and operated an insurance agency. At the beginning of his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Senator Scott was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2013 after his predecessor unexpectedly resigned. He won a special election the following year with 61% of the vote—the highest for any statewide office in South Carolina’s history.

“Unfortunately in Washington, there aren’t many people who have actual business experience,” said Senator Scott when he addressed Big “I” membership during the Legislative Conference Breakfast last week. “My ask of the industry is to stay consistently engaged in the process of reminding people like me that we work for you. We need to be reminded that we serve the people, not lead the people.”

Without service-oriented leadership, Senator Scott said the country will “matriculate to this new paradigm that ‘Europe knows best.’”

“I do not want Europe’s economic policies or central bank policies or their insurance policies or much of anything else,” Senator Scott said. “We’re doing OK over here—in spite of our anemic growth, we’re still in better shape than the Europeans. Why not get them to adopt our policies that actually work and produce a better global economy?”

In his work on the Senate Finance Committee, as well as the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, Senator Scott has found that ongoing conversations about the globalization of insurance regulation inevitably trickle down into every facet of the market.

In the year ahead, Senator Scott said the Senate plans to review Dodd-Frank and consider different perspectives on tax reform. “We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world,” he said. “The reality is for us to see the economy grow, we have to have a serious stab at tax reform and a responsible level of regulations. If we can tee that up for 2017, perhaps the 115^th Congress will be the first Congress since 1986 to see real tax reform happen.”

For Senator Scott, who served in the House in 2011-2013 and previously served on the Charleston County Council and in the South Carolina House of Representatives, tax reform is ultimately about removing the “disproportionate share of economic burden” from the average American.

“At the end of the day, the only person that pays taxes in this country is the consumer—everything is passed down to the individual,” Senator Scott said. “To the extent that we’re able to reform our taxes, we can lift the burden from the everyday person and find ourselves in a far better position to grow our economy.”

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.