Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start off with a quote from Speaker Paul Ryan in a 2012 townhall meeting. This is what he said to his constituents: ``If you're a bank and you want to operate like some nonbank entity like a hedge fund, then don't be a bank. Don't let banks use their customers' money to do anything other than traditional banking.''

I agree, and that is why Congress passed the Volcker rule in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, to prevent taxpayer-backed banks from engaging in risky, speculative activities like owning hedge funds. But since that time, Republicans have engaged in a relentless attack against the Volcker rule at the behest of Wall Street megabanks.

H.R. 4790, the so-called Volcker Rule Regulatory Harmonization Act, is the latest threat to that rule. Specifically, H.R. 4790, contains two problematic provisions that would create a loophole in the Volcker rule and make it easier for the Trump administration to weaken or repeal it.

Leading up to the financial crisis, Wall Street megabanks engaged in proprietary trading, which is essentially speculative, highly leveraged betting that benefits their bottom line but uses federally insured loans backed by the U.S. taxpayer.

These banks gambled on exotic financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations comprised of risky subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, which even the legendary investor, Warren Buffett, criticized as ``financial weapons of mass destruction.''

When the Housing bubble finally burst, these bets led to massive losses and required the Federal Government to bail out the banking industry with trillions of taxpayer dollars to stop an economic catastrophe. To protect the American taxpayer and the economy from this sort of risky trading as well as to return banks to the business of helping consumers and small businesses, Congress included the Volcker rule's ban on proprietary trading as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Specifically, the Volcker rule prohibits taxpayer-backed banks from engaging in risky proprietary trading and from owning hedge funds and private equity funds. It also prohibits banks from owning the very same risky collateralized debt obligations that accelerated the 2008 crisis.

According to Martin Gruenberg, Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, that is, the FDIC, which is the agency charged with protecting taxpayers from bank bailouts, ``had it,'' this prohibition, ``been in place then, the Volcker rule would have constrained the proliferation of such instruments.''

The result today is less reckless risk-taking by Wall Street megabanks and a stronger financial system. And despite dire predictions by Republicans, our banks have returned to lending to consumers and businesses, and our financial markets are adapting and thriving.

For example, since passage of Dodd-Frank, bank lending to businesses has increased 80 percent; and in the bond market, which has long been dominated by bank dealers, we have seen record-new bond issuance by companies, States, cities, and towns seeking to raise funds and record trading volumes in those bonds. Most other metrics also show a healthy corporate bond market.

Nevertheless, H.R. 4790 is just the latest Republican attempt to weaken the Volcker rule. First, the bill would provide a blanket exemption from the Volcker rule for 97 percent of our Nation's banks which have consolidated assets of $10 billion or less and with less than 5 percent of those assets in trading assets.

To be clear, most community banks do not engage in any trading activities and, therefore, have no compliance requirements under the rule. However, H.R. 4790 would give all community banks the congressional thumbs-up to begin speculative trading instead of focusing on the traditional business of banking. It also makes community banks prime targets for hedge fund salesmen.

Now, why is this an area of concern for me? It is an area of concern because I hear the community banks when they say that their numbers are going down because of mergers and consolidation. This bill does not help with this problem. It makes it worse because it sends a shining beacon to hedge funds all over the country that they can peddle risky and questionable investments to community banks, and the regulators will be none the wiser.

I am extraordinarily concerned with the extent of the affordable housing crisis our Nation is facing. We need banks to invest in housing and in our communities. I believe that community banks can provide those kind of investments.

But I am also concerned that, if the hedge funds can prey on community banks with little oversight, then they will be unable to provide the kinds of investments in housing and small businesses that communities need. Instead, we will see more community banks investing in hedge funds and possibly leaving these communities behind.

So when Members ask: How can we create more affordable housing or address the issues that experts like Dr. Matthew Desmond are raising on the housing crisis in America, one thing that we can do is not think narrowly about the impact of financial services legislation, and, particularly, legislation like H.R. 4790 that can create lasting, unintended consequences if not carefully considered.

We should think broadly and realize that the policies that we make for banks can have real impacts on the communities they serve. And the regulators and experts have done just that. They have carefully considered the bill's provisions and the unintended consequences that could ensue.

That is why the blanket carve-out in this bill is opposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman and the rule's namesake, Paul Volcker, who has said: ``I know from my long experience in banking and savings and loan regulation that plausibly small loopholes can be `gamed' and exploited with unfortunate consequences.'' Paul Volcker was Chairman of the Federal Reserve for part of the savings and loan crisis, which, during that time, more than 1,000 S&Ls failed, fully one-third of the industry.

The exemption is also opposed by FDIC Chairman Gruenberg, FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig, and investors and advocates.

If we truly want to reduce regulatory burdens on community banks that engage in permitted trading activity, we should be looking at other ways to accommodate them, such as by creating a presumption of compliance with the Volcker rule, which reduces compliance costs without opening up a loophole. Rather than encouraging banks, especially community banks, to make speculative bets on hedge funds or derivatives, we should be doing everything possible to ensure banks are focused on supporting their communities by offering mortgages and commercial loans.

Second, H.R. 4790 would repeal the requirement that the Federal Reserve, FDIC; Office of the Comptroller of Currency, that is the OCC; Securities and Exchange Commission, that is the SEC; and the Commodity Futures Trading

Commission, that is the CFTC, work together to jointly implement the rule. Instead, the bill would delegate sole rulemaking authority to the Federal Reserve, which could choose to consult or not consult with the other regulators.

This would unreasonably cut the FDIC out of any future rule changes, even though it is the regulator charged with protecting deposit insurance against the very risky, speculative activities the Volcker rule was designed to prevent.

It would also cut the OCC out of the rulemaking process, even though it oversees institutions that account for approximately 40 percent of bank holding company trading revenues.

And it would cut out the SEC and the CFTC, even though those agencies have the expertise and jurisdiction over broker dealers and future traders and their marketmaking activities.

Worse, appointing the Fed a single regulator would make it easier for the Trump administration to weaken and repeal the Volcker rule, even though it was expeditiously promulgated in 2 years and the regulators are now working together to make appropriate changes. While the bill would at least allow the appropriate banking regulators--SEC and CFTC-- to enforce the rule, such enforcement authority is meaningless if the Volcker rule is effectively gutted by the Trump administration.

But this is what my Republican colleagues want. Chairman Hensarling's 600-page Big Bank giveaway, H.R. 10, known as the ``Wrong'' CHOICE Act, would have repealed the Volcker rule outright. H.R. 4790 is merely the latest attempt to do the same thing.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 4790, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Foster), who is a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Illinois an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, when the gentleman from Michigan started his remarks, he

accused me of wanting to talk about housing. He is absolutely correct. I want to talk about housing. I believe that if we really understood the needs of our constituents all over this country, instead of talking about megabanks and how we can give them whatever they want in order to make more profits, we should be talking about housing. We should be talking about housing needs in this country.

As a matter of fact, I have said to the chairman more than once that I really would like to have a hearing on homelessness because homelessness is exploding all over the country. In the city of Los Angeles, we have probably over 53,000 homeless people every night without a place to lay their heads.

Oh, yes, we should be talking about housing. You cannot separate trading from housing in the way that maybe some would attempt to do: Oh, this is about Volcker; it has nothing to do with housing.

Oh, yes, it does.

Because, instead of this risky trading that the banks are doing, they should be investing in our communities and providing for affordable housing.

And let me just tell you, African-American homeownership today is as low as it was when housing discrimination was legal. There is not a single county in the United States with sufficient affordable housing.

So, yes, we should be talking about housing, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Thank you for accusing me of wanting to talk about housing.

Last year our Nation's banks reported $164.8 billion in profit. Had it not been for the Republicans' new tax law which required them to take a one-time charge, the FDIC estimates that the banks would have profited to the tune of $183.1 billion, which is an all-time high and an increase of 7.2 percent from 2016 and a 26 percent increase from 2006.

So I think it is a little hard to argue that banks don't have enough money to lend, but let's look at what they did with that money.

The Wall Street megabanks returned a lot of that money to their shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. For example, in June 2017, J.P. Morgan announced a stock repurchase program of up to $19.4 billion, its biggest buyback since the financial crisis. Citigroup also announced its largest ever stock buyback program, worth up to $15.6 billion, and doubled its dividend.

The Wall Street megabanks also handsomely rewarded their CEOs with some of the biggest paydays since 2006. Five Wall Street banks, combined, paid their CEOs a total compensation of $126 million, the highest amount since before the financial crisis. Each chief of the banks--which includes Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley--received an average $25.3 million for their work, and that was up 17 percent from 2016.

Mr. Speaker, we listen to Chairman Hensarling's stories. He shares a lot of stories with us that he receives from his constituents about problems they are having receiving car loans or a mortgage. And I agree, we should be doing more to expand access to credit for consumers; but what I do not agree with is the Republican argument that, if we only repealed bank regulations, then all of a sudden those individuals would receive the car loans and the mortgages that they currently cannot.

Banks are raking in money hand over fist, and they could use that money now to lend to creditworthy borrowers instead of paying millions of dollars in bonuses to their CEOs. Let's be clear about what is really going on. No amount of regulatory relief will cure Wall Street greed.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this is absolutely amazing. We had the gentleman earlier who said this is not the time to talk about housing, and then we have the gentleman from Wisconsin who says, when the banks do well, our constituents do well.

The banks are making millions of dollars; the CEOs are making millions of dollars; and they have bank tellers and people who work who are not even making $15 an hour. We can't even get a minimum wage increase, Federal minimum wage increase for our constituents, and many of them are working in these megabanks where the CEOs are walking away every year with millions of dollars in pay.

So these statements, when banks do well, everybody does well, I wish my good friend would reexamine that statement because I think, when he thinks about it, he might want to retract it and take that back.

``Certainly, we have to do a better job ring-fencing, fire-walling-- whatever metaphor you want to use--between an insured depository institution and a noninsured investment bank.'' That is a quote from Chairman Jeb Hensarling, March 2013. That appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

And this is just what the Volcker rule does.

``If you're a bank and you want to operate like some nonbank entity like a hedge fund, then don't be a bank. Don't let banks use their customers' money

to do anything other than traditional banking.'' Again, I repeat, that is what Speaker Paul Ryan said in May 2012 in a townhall meeting.

``I do support the Volcker rule. I think the concept of proprietary trading does not belong in banks with FDIC insurance.'' That is a quote from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, January 2017, during the Senate confirmation hearings.

Another quote: ``I think the Volcker rule is very important and it is good. I think the Volcker rule is good. Banks should not be a last resort to sell securities. Banks should not have prop desks buying them.''

That was Carl Icahn, the hedge fund manager and currently special adviser to President Trump on regulatory reform during a 2015 conference.

Another quote: ``Proprietary trading played a big role in manufacturing the CDOs and other instruments that were at the heart of the financial crisis. . . . If firms weren't able to buy up the parts of these deals that wouldn't sell . . . the game would have stopped a lot sooner.''

This is a quote by Michael Madden, a managing director of the investment firm BlackEagle Partners and a former Lehman executive.

We have more quotes. Here is one: ``The industry should be compartmentalized so as to limit the propagation of failures and also to preserve cultural boundaries.'' That is a quote by John Reed, the former Citigroup chairman, in a Senate testimony, February 2010.

Further quoting: ``A strong Volcker rule is one of the most important provisions to prevent `too big to fail' financial institutions, stop conflicts of interest, and support credit in our economy. . . . Failure to comply should be severely punished.'' And this is what Reed said in a letter to regulators, February 2012.

Again, in looking at all of these quotes, we find that there is one from former Democratic and Republican Secretaries of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal, joined by Nicholas Brady, Paul O'Neill, George Schultz, and John Snow.

This is what they said: ``Banks benefiting from public support by means of access to the Federal Reserve and FDIC insurance should not engage in essentially speculative activity unrelated to essential bank services.'' Again, all of these gentlemen said this in a letter, reported in The Wall Street Journal, February 2010. This was a letter to the editor.

And let me just, again, refer to one of the greatest economists in this country and the former Chair of the FDIC, Paul Volcker. What did he say?

He said, in essence: The five banking regulatory authorities have now successfully responded to the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act by setting out a comprehensive regulation restricting proprietary trading by commercial banks in the United States. . . . The agencies have dealt comprehensively with thousands of particular conceptual and practical questions raised by affected bankers, by legions of lobbyists, by other interested parties, and by the general public. . . . The result should help the process of restoring trust and confidence in commercial banking institutions. It is, after all, those institutions which benefit from explicit and implicit public support that we count on to provide a strong, safe, and effective financial system--Paul Volcker, December 2013.

``The Volcker rule will make it illegal for firms to use government- insured money to make speculative bets that threaten the entire financial system and demand a new era of accountability from CEOs who must sign off on their firms' practices. Our financial system will be safer, and the American people are more secure because we fought to include this protection in the law.'' That was President Obama, December 2013.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), my friend and champion of consumers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire, how many more speakers does Mr. Hensarling have?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

This is the third bill that the majority has put on the House floor this week that is a harmful giveaway to the big banks. I could just list you all of the deregulatory bills that they have been bringing forward, but, today, the bill we are considering, H.R. 4790, would threaten the Volcker rule, which prevents banks from gambling with taxpayer money. As we have discussed, the Volcker rule is a key component of Wall Street reform and has prevented risky, speculative behavior by Wall Street and made our economy safer. It must not be compromised.

It seems the Republicans have not learned the lessons of the financial crisis at all. They are working every day to reverse critical Dodd-Frank reforms and to reopen the door to risky and harmful practices that led our Nation to economic catastrophe, so I oppose this bill.

I do not want our Members to be tricked or fooled talking about community banks. This is not about community banks. This is about the megabanks. They always use the community banks to lead on some of these arguments so that people will think that they are doing something for community banks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the importance that Vietnam war memorials have in our Nation's remembrance and commemoration of Vietnam veterans and their distinguished devotion to duty and country.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a symbol of honor, recognition, and remembrance of the more than 58,000 military servicemembers who sacrificed their lives or remain missing to this day and the over 8.7 million brave men and women who served over the course of the Vietnam war. More than 5.6 million people visit the memorial each year.

Not long after the memorial opened, it became clear that families across the country, not just those visiting

Washington, D.C., greatly desired the opportunity to remember those we have lost and pay their respects to the approximately 7.3 million Vietnam war veterans living today.

To accommodate, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund built an iconic replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This replica travels across the country as part of The Wall That Heals exhibit, stopping in approximately 39 communities each year. The replica is 375 feet in length, 7.5 feet high at its tallest point, and includes 140 panels, each engraved with the names of fallen United States Armed Forces servicemembers who served during the Vietnam war. It has been displayed at almost 600 communities nationwide.

There are roughly 7,500 Vietnam veterans living in my district, the 43rd Congressional District, alone, and over 570,000 in the State of California. California is home to more veterans than any other State-- almost 2 million. The residents of my district and the State of California deserve the opportunity to say thank you to some of the bravest Americans who have ever lived and remember those they may have lost.

I worked with the city of Gardena and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund for 2 years to bring the replica to my district, and I am so happy to say that we recently succeeded. This past weekend, The Wall That Heals arrived in one of my cities, the city of Gardena, California, to a welcoming crowd of hundreds who came to pay their respects and honor Vietnam veterans.

In my opinion, full and appropriate recognition of our Vietnam veterans is long overdue. The war often separated friends and families, both physically and politically, and created divisions which have taken years to heal. Many veterans have spoken about how difficult this was and how much harder this made the healing process.

No matter what you may have felt about the war, we should all honor the sacrifice made by our veterans who answered their country's call, who served, and who sacrificed.

This country should be and is honored to acknowledge and express appreciation for the sacrifices Vietnam veterans and their families made, both during their service and over the many years since. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall That Heals, and the dozens of local museums and memorials allow us to pay proper respect to and commemorate our Vietnam veterans.

I have just introduced a resolution in recognition of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, its traveling replica, which is one part of The Wall That Heals exhibit, and the Vietnam veterans for their devotion to neighbor, community, and country.

I say once again: Welcome home, Vietnam veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose H.R. 4293, the Stress Test Improvement Act, which is designed to line Wall Street's pockets by weakening a critical tool to prevent a future financial crisis.

Bank stress tests are a forward-looking tool where a hypothetical scenario or two are tested, such as, how would a megabank fare if a major recession occurred next year with unemployment and foreclosures going way up? These tests, incredibly, are very helpful to see if banks might need to maintain more capital to help buffer against such a scenario.

These are similar to crash tests for cars where a manufacturer runs their cars through crash test simulations to see if passengers will remain safe in various kinds of crashes. Such testing provides valuable insights regarding what design adjustments might be needed to ensure the car is as safe as possible.

So let us take a look at how this safeguard developed. When President Obama took office, his administration inherited an economy in free fall with about 800,000 jobs lost that very month. Many wondered how many more financial firms might fail. So Treasury Secretary Geithner worked with the Federal Reserve, and together they designed the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program.

These stress tests checked how resilient the largest banks were if, in fact, the economy continued to deteriorate. Results were published, and we learned that 10 of the 19 participating firms were collectively about $75 billion short of the required capital ratios. These tests provided criminal transparency to the market, thereby enabling the banks to begin recapitalizing themselves with new funds from investors who themselves had renewed confidence in the banking industry.

Following this success, Congress decided to mandate these stress tests to be regularly required of the Nation's largest banks in Dodd- Frank. This would ensure banks and their regulators remained vigilant, especially when times were good, so that they could spot problems much earlier and take corrective action.

The Federal Reserve implemented these Dodd-Frank stress tests alongside their Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, known as CCAR, which added a capital planning component to the tests.

According to credit rating agencies and financial analysts, these stress tests, along with Dodd-Frank's other enhanced prudential requirements of the largest banks, have made our financial system much safer.

Now, let me give you some numbers. Since 2009, the 34 largest banks have increased their capital by $750 billion, bringing the industry's total capital buffer to nearly $2 trillion today. That is $750 billion in more high-quality funding that banks can safely lend and invest, which helps explain why business lending has also increased almost 80 percent the last 8 years.

But H.R. 4293, this bill, would undermine all of that and proposes three changes that megabanks like Wells Fargo would love to see. First, the bill would eliminate the adverse scenario from Fed-run stress tests. But like in car crash tests today, multiple scenarios can help ensure an institution can survive a wider range of unforeseen events.

Second, the bill would bar the Fed from making qualitative objections to a bank's capital plan. Even the Federal Reserve led by President Trump's appointees issued a lengthy proposal yesterday altering some of the stress testing rules, and their proposal maintains their ability to make qualitative objections. So there is no basis for Congress to unilaterally make it harder for regulators to ensure megabanks are well run and capitalized.

Third, the bill would allow Wall Street megabanks to conduct fewer company-run stress tests--annually instead of semiannually. But given how quickly tides can shift, routine, semiannual testing can better identify problems before they grow into larger problems.

As a former Federal Reserve official wrote last year: ``Had stress tests as conducted now been in place before the crisis, they could have made firms more resilient to unexpected losses, and at a minimum could have given supervisors the ability to question banks' continued dividend and share buybacks in the quarters leading to the height of the crisis.''

Accordingly, I strongly urge Members to reject this rollback for Wall Street megabanks.

Let me just add by saying: Why would we do this?

Why would we, knowing what we went through in 2008 where we had this subprime meltdown, we went into a recession--almost a depression--and we discovered that the banks were undercapitalized and they could not deal with this kind of change in the economy, they could not deal with the fact that something had gone wrong and be prepared to deal with it rather than us having to bail them out in the way that we did?

I don't know why we would do this now. So I would simply ask Members to ask the question: Why is it we would take away something that would make the banks safer, that would make them more stable, and that would make them able to be able to sustain despite the fact there was a crisis developing in the economy?

Why would we want to take away this safety that we have built with stress testing?

So, with that, Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Members to reject this rollback for Wall Street megabanks, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, again, I raise the question of why are we considering a bill that would reduce the amount of scrutiny that we have with this stress testing from the biggest banks in America, when, in fact, we know that this stress testing was created because of the problems that we were faced with in 2008?

We learned an awful lot about what we should not do and what we should change in order never to be in the position again where we have to bail out all of these big banks.

We are simply saying: Banks, you have to be tested. You have to have a stress test to see if you can withstand the difficulty that will be presented if, in fact, the economy gets in trouble. It is as simple as that.

Do you have enough capital? Are you organized in such a way that you won't go under, that you won't create a problem in our economy because of the size of your bank if you get in trouble?

So I would simply ask our Members to reject this bill because this bill is not needed. It is simply a way by which to comply with the megabanks' request to not have to do the work that is necessary to prove that they are safe. And I don't know why we would do that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with Members a Communications Workers of America letter to us on H.R. 4293.

And they state: H.R. 4293 would undermine the effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review--that is, CCAR--stress test. Specifically, the bill would prohibit the Federal Reserve from objecting to a capital plan on the basis of qualitative reasons; such as, the reasonableness of the assumptions and analysis underlying the plan. The bill would also cut the frequency of CCAR tests in half, taking away tools and reducing the amount of information available to the Federal Reserve about bank health and is a fundamentally bad idea.

Really, it is basically what we have been saying. We have been saying that this would reduce the stress tests from semiannually to an annual test.

Why would you want to have less scrutiny of these banks? Why would you want to reduce the amount of time that they would have relative to being able to prove that they are safe?

Also, I think it is very important what is being said here about the Fed and the Fed's ability to basically review, on the basis of qualitative reasons, such as reasonableness and of assumptions and analyses underlying the plan.

So they are looking to see if these banks are well capitalized, if these banks can withstand, again, problems in our economy that would arise that could create unemployment and all kinds of other adverse conditions.

So I would ask the Members to oppose this bill. This is just another deregulation bill for the biggest banks in America. We should not be doing that because these are the banks that, if they are undercapitalized, if they don't have what is needed to withstand problems in our society that could arise in the economy, it could cause us to go into another recession, even a depression perhaps.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know what this overkill argument is all about. This is about deregulation. The banks, these megabanks, don't need any more deregulation or help from Congress. In 2016, the industry made record-breaking profits, more than $170 billion in profits. The Republicans gave the eight largest Wall Street banks a $15 billion windfall from their tax scam bill. And CEOs are making more money on Wall

Street, as much as they made in 2006, before they drove our economy into a massive ditch.

Megabanks need reasonable but strong stress tests to keep our economy safe. And I want to tell you, after Dodd-Frank reforms were put in place--and the stress test was one of the things that had to be done-- the banks resisted it, but finally they came into compliance. And it took them several years, and then they did it the way that Dodd-Frank would have them do it. So there are no problems.

These stress tests now are stress tests that reveal exactly what is going on in the bank. And so why are we trying to undo this? Why do you want to see them once a year instead of twice a year? Twice a year has proven that we can keep them straight, that we can make sure that they are well capitalized, that we can make sure they have a good financial plan.

So I would simply say, let's not get involved in more deregulation and take us back to where we were when we got in trouble in 2008. I would ask the Members to vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with Members the opinions of former Chair Janet Yellen, who has stated that stress testing improves public understanding of risk at large banking firms, provides a forward-looking examination of firms' potential losses, and has contributed to significant improvement in risk management.

Former Chair Ben Bernanke has praised stress testing for playing a crucial role in the recovery of the economy and creating a more resilient postcrisis U.S. banking system.

The deceptively named Stress Test Improvement Act--that is, this bill--severely weakens this key element of bank oversight and must be rejected. We cannot ignore the analyses that are being given by these former Fed Chairs. I mean, they are saying do not be tricked, do not be fooled, that this is a deceptive bill, and that stress testing must continue in order to ensure the stability of our banks in the event the economy goes awry.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have left.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to focus on pushing through giveaways to Wall Street and megabanks like Wells Fargo that could be harmful to consumers, investors, and our Nation's economy. Week after week, Republicans advance legislation that is basically reckless and misguided. H.R. 4293 is yet another bad bill from the Republicans that weakens critical protections put in place by Democrats to prevent another financial crisis.

As we have discussed, the bill undermines the stress test framework for our Nation's largest banks. Stress tests are an important regulatory tool that have much improved the safety of our financial system.

Mr. Speaker, when we crafted Dodd-Frank, we mandated these stress tests and put in place other enhanced prudential guardrails for large banks to not only prevent damage to our economy, but also help grow our economy, and they are working. H.R. 4293 weakens the rigor and frequency of these stress tests, a move that simply makes no sense.

Rather than harmful measures such as this one, Congress should be working to strengthen consumer protections, reform our broken system of credit reporting, provide tailored, responsible relief for community banks, and ensure that recidivist megabanks are held accountable for breaking the law.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill, and I urge Members again to simply ask the question: Why, at this point in time, would we want to basically reduce the ability for us to know exactly what is going on in those banks, whether or not they are fully capitalized, whether or not they could withstand a serious problem in our economy?

I don't think that the opposite side of the aisle, my friends, could really answer that question because this is simply a deregulatory bill for the biggest banks in America, for the megabanks, not needed, and certainly we need the information. We never want to go through a period of time like we did in 2008 where we discovered that our banks were not well capitalized and could not withstand the problems that we encountered.

I simply ask all Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

In its current form, I am.

Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill, which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, we have talked at length about how H.R. 4293 is a bill for Wall Street megabanks to line their pockets while reducing safeguards that better protect the Main Street economy from another financial crisis. While I deeply disagree with the bill's approach, I offer this motion to recommit, not in a manner that sends the bill to the committee and kills the bill, but rather to attempt to improve the bill before the House votes on final passage of the measure.

We all know megabanks have been given a free ride in Washington for far too long when it comes to repeated, egregious offenses. They just get a fine--the equivalent of a slap on the wrist--for harming consumers.

Since 2010, megabanks have racked up over $160 billion worth of fines, yet they keep breaking the law.

We have talked about Wells Fargo's growing list of illegal actions that have harmed millions of consumers. Sure they have been fined, but these fines, even $1 billion in fines, are just the cost of doing business for a company that made over $22 billion in profit in 2017. This soft enforcement approach is just increasing their operational risk and losses, which, at the end of the day, will impact not only all of their consumers, but the broader economy as well.

I hope Republicans and Democrats can all agree that any megabank that engages in a pattern or practice of unsafe or unsound banking practices and other egregious violations that has resulted in profound consumer harm in the last 10 years is not entitled to any benefit of regulatory relief provided under this bill, especially regulatory relief that would eliminate the type of oversight that makes sure our economy stays safe. So my amendment would exclude a megabank like Wells Fargo that has fraudulently opened millions of accounts without their customers' consent, enrolled consumers in life insurance policies without their consent, and forced nearly 1 million Americans to purchase auto insurance they didn't need.

Since 2016, I have been calling for Wells Fargo to face real penalties. I introduced H.R. 3937, the Megabank Accountability and Consequences Act, to compel the Federal bank regulators to fully utilize existing authorities to stop megabanks from repeatedly flouting the law and harming millions of consumers. So I was glad to see Janet Yellen, on her last day at the Fed, take bold action to cap the bank's size until it cleans up its act.

We must do more to send a strong message to all megabanks that there will be real consequences for their bad actions that mislead, abuse, or deceive its customers. H.R. 4293, in its current form, would send the opposite message to recidivist megabanks and undermine the hard work we have done since the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to adopt this motion to recommit so that we do not reward a recidivist megabank like Wells Fargo for repeated operational failures that ripped

off millions of consumers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4061, the so-called Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act.

The bill would recklessly complicate the process used by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, also referred to as FSOC, to designate nonbank firms for heightened oversight and protect the economy.

The bill would also give companies more avenues to delay by at least 4 years or block these designations even when the designations are warranted.

According to former Treasury Secretary Lew, who previously chaired FSOC and strongly opposed this bill last Congress: ``An extensively long 4-year process to designate large, complex firms that pose significant risk to the financial system is not an improvement; instead, it would effectively render meaningless one of the most important tools we in future councils should have to address threats to financial stability.''

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed this view, finding that H.R. 4061 would increase the risk that undesignated systemic nonbank firms will fail.

Let me be very clear: This bill is a thinly veiled attempt to hinder and needlessly delay FSOC's existing ability to designate firms for heightened oversight.

Americans for Financial Reform has also underscored that this bill would: ``Provide giant, global financial firms numerous opportunities to use insider lobbying and the courts to delay or prevent actions that banking regulators are attempting to take to safeguard economic stability.''

One of the reasons Congress created FSOC was to make sure that large, interconnected firms like Bear Stearns, AIG, or Lehman Brothers would never again devastate the stability of our financial system and jeopardize our country's strong economy with their risky practices and relentless demand for profits over safe and sound operations.

So I simply cannot support this bill, which would add hurdles to prevent FSOC from fulfilling its vital role of identifying interconnected, huge companies that warrant enhanced safeguards.

I also reject the myths Republicans continue to spread about the Dodd-Frank Act in their effort to roll back so many of its critical reforms. The majority has claimed that Dodd-Frank has caused tremendous burden on the financial industry and resulted in lenders denying affordable access to credit to consumers and families, but the numbers tell the real story of the success of Dodd-Frank and the need to maintain its regulatory regime, including the FSOC. Why? Because bank profits and share prices have skyrocketed and are now far above pre- recession heights.

In addition, business lending has increased 80 percent and community banks are doing well.

What is more, pay for bank executives is through the roof. CEO pay on Wall Street is back up to levels we last saw in 2006. Even Wells Fargo's CEO, yes, the recidivist megabank that has violated numerous laws and harmed millions of consumers, was paid $17.5 million last year. In fact, the CEO was paid 291 times the median salary for Wells Fargo employees.

While Wall Street has fully recovered, Main Street has not. As Neel Kashkari, a Republican former Treasury official who now serves as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis argued in a Washington Post op-ed on March 8, 2018: ``The Great Recession pushed millions of Americans out of the labor force, some of whom still haven't returned. Although the headline unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 10 percent during the recession to 4.1 percent this past January, that statistic ignores people who have given up looking for work. A different measure of people in their prime working years suggests that more than 1 million Americans are still on the sidelines.''

Keep in mind, these are warnings from a Republican official. In fact, he goes on to say: ``Big banks still threaten our economy.''

So I will continue to oppose measures like H.R. 4061 that would return our regulatory regime back to a system that encouraged interconnected, huge firms to grow at all costs and that cheered as these firms devised new and so-called innovative products, many of which are only innovative in terms of how risky and unsound they were.

As so many have noted, if we undermine the ability of FSOC to stand guard, as this bill would do, then we risk opening the door once again to the wolves of Wall Street to wreak havoc with our economy again.

This bill, in effect, recreates the moral hazard in Wall Street's corporate culture that promotes profits before consumers. This bill would put the interests of corporate America before protections of consumers, the interests of the public, and the stability of the U.S. economy.

So, we must all remain vigilant against bills like this or we risk another financial crisis. I, therefore, urge my colleagues to learn from the mistakes of the past and oppose H.R. 4061.

Mr. Speaker, I am absolutely weary of coming to this floor with bills that deregulate megabanks. I am absolutely tired of coming to this floor having to remind my colleagues over and over again about the crisis that we had to be presented with and had to work through in 2008.

I don't know why it is our Members find so much time to protect the biggest banks in America, the richest banks in America, the CEOs who are making millions of dollars, while, in fact, the consumers come second or third in the work that they are doing.

This is simply about deregulation. This is about giving the banks more power. This is about disregarding the fact that we have had to fine them over and over again and they still find ways to defraud and to cheat the consumers of America.

As the chairman just mentioned about the fines of Wells Fargo, well, they are up for another fine of about a billion dollars because they cheated their clients, they cheated their customers, they created accounts in their names that they didn't know anything about, they forced insurance on them that they didn't need, many of them already had insurance, and it goes on and on and on.

I hope that we could convince our Members that we need to spend more time on some of the issues that are really confronting America.

I am on this committee as the ranking member. We don't have any bills or any sessions about homelessness. We are not talking about the people who are on the street all over America. We are not talking about the housing crisis where the average family even that is employed working every day can't afford to buy a home, now can't even afford to lease a place to live. It is off the scale.

I could go on and recount all of the things we should be addressing just in our committee, not to talk about the other things and issues in this Congress of the United States that we should be looking at, we should be paying attention to.

We have had all of the gun issues, we have all the issues that are going on now about Syria, and on and on and on, and yet we find the time to come to this floor day in and day out, time and time again, to talk about how we can make the biggest banks in America richer and more profitable.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to just walk through some of what happens with FSOC with these nonbank designations and the process, because I have always wanted to be sure that the process would give these nonbanks an opportunity to basically convince FSOC that they were safe and they were sound and they didn't present any risk, and all of that.

Of course, a lot of this was triggered by AIG. If you remember AIG and what happened with this nonbank who was involved in credit default swaps without the collateral to back them up, this certainly was informative, and it helped to develop this process.

Stage 1, the metrics: minimum quantitative metrics for a nonbank financial company to be eligible for designation.

Stage 2, preliminary review, 6 months: staff analyzes preliminary data and meets with the company, consults with existing regulators.

Stage 3, in-depth review, 14 months: staff analyzes extensive data, meets with company, consults with existing regulators, FSOC deputies meet with company.

Proposed designation and hearing on the final designation, 4 months. FSOC provides written basis of proposed designation, oral hearings, provides lengthy written basis of final designation.

Total time from outset of analysis to final designation, 2 years.

Judicial and annual reviews: any designated company may challenge FSOC's determination in court; every designated company is re-reviewed by FSOC every year to consider de-designation.

I want you to know what is being proposed in this bill is quite different and, instead of the 2 years that I have just walked through, it would take approximately 4.3 years. At such time, you could have one of these nonbanks in trouble, presenting great risk, and you would not be able to do very much about it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with Members a statement from the former Secretary of the Treasury who had the responsibility to head FSOC, and that is Jacob J. Lew. He said, and I will read from his communication to us:

Unfortunately, none of the legislation the committee plans

to consider this week--referring to this bill--would

strengthen the Council's ability to address the very real

risk the largest and most complex financial firms could pose.

Instead, these proposals would be a big step backwards for

regulatory tools to prevent the same kinds of threats. These

bills would severely undermine and impair the Council. One of

the proposals would require the Council to spend 4 years

analyzing a firm before taking action to address any risk the

firms may propose, doubling the time period for designation

review.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I do think that it is important that we share as much information as we can about FSOC because not a lot is known by the average person about FSOC, and when we talk about it, we oftentimes fail to talk about who makes up FSOC.

We are talking about 10 voting members, headed by Treasury, the Treasury Secretary. You have on FSOC all of the experts. You have the Federal Reserve. You have the FDIC. You have the OCC. You have the NCUA. You have the CFPB, the FHFA, the SEC, the CFTC, and an independent insurance expert. So here you have convened on the FSOC all of these experts, and they are looking at nonbanks that could present great risk to our economy, like AIG.

I have to keep reminding people about AIG because AIG was this nonbank that we bailed out to the tune of about $182 billion, $183 billion.

Don't forget, they were involved with credit default swaps that were not

collateralized. They were basically putting insurance out there that, when the time came due for them to have to pay off, they couldn't because they didn't have the collateral to do that.

So with these experts, with the experiences that we have gone through, FSOC makes a lot of sense. And when it is said that all they can do is designate, that is extremely important because that gives the companies an opportunity to go back and take a look at themselves and see what they can do to reduce this risk to become more stable, and this has happened already.

As a matter of fact, I think to designate a nonbank, FSOC must have a vote of two-thirds of its members, including the Treasury Secretary. So this is not easily done.

Again, designation gives the companies an opportunity to go back and take a look. At least one of them has decided to downsize.

Let me just share this with you. First, FSOC is certainly not running a Hotel California. A designated firm like GE Capital was able to make the kind of risk-reducing structural reforms that led to their de- designation under the annual review process required by Dodd-Frank. So, no, designated firms are not stuck with their designation forever.

Don't forget, they get reviewed every year. Don't forget, they can make changes. Don't forget, they can take the advice. They can come in and they can continue to work on putting themselves in order so that they can get de-designated. And I think that is extremely important and that should not get lost.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, a moment ago, I identified the 10 voting members that serve on FSOC. I did not add to that the nonvoting members. To show you the expertise that is involved with FSOC, they also have these nonvoting members: Estate Insurance Regulator, Estate Bank Regulator, State Securities Regulator, and the Federal Insurance Office.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

One of the wonderful things about working and living in a democracy is that people have an opportunity to have opinions and to voice them and to act out on them. And certainly we don't always agree on everything. The Republicans don't always agree in their caucuses. Sometimes they walk lockstep for all kinds of reasons, but they do disagree sometimes when they feel it is safe to do so.

But Democrats do not always agree, and we disagree perhaps more in our caucus than Republicans do, and we feel free to do that because we understand the importance of the democracy and what it permits and allows you to do.

So in saying that, we take every effort in my committee to make sure that all of our members have the information that they need. My staff is available to provide any assistance that we can provide. So we are very pleased and proud that I, as the ranking member, operate the committee in a way that respects all of its members.

And even those members who come to the floor who are opposed, perhaps, to a bill or are supporting a bill that I and others may oppose, I respect that. That is how democracy works.

So today, we do have Democratic members who are supporting this bill. For whatever reasons, they believe that FSOC perhaps is too tough on some of the companies, that somehow they really don't achieve their mission of reducing risk. Whatever it is they believe, they certainly have a right to do that. And I respect that.

Having said that, I believe that the lesson that we learn, as a result of 2008 and the recession that we went through, and AIG, the nonbank, in particular, that we bailed out when we saw the weakness of AIG, and the fact that they had basically dealt with these credit default swaps, and that it had created such a problem in our economy, I am so pleased that we had the foresight and the wisdom to come up with a way by which to identify this risk of the nonbanks so that they do not create the kind of turbulence and problems that we had in 2008.

Having said that, I am very pleased about the wide breadth of expertise that is on the FSOC. And I certainly believe that having gone through the steps that they take, that those steps will allow everyone to understand and see how fair they are, what kind of time it takes; and it gives every opportunity to be de-designated from being identified as a SIFI.

So I am very pleased and proud that I am able to say to my colleagues--no matter how they vote--that I believe that the FSOC is an important reform in the Dodd-Frank reforms. I would ask them to oppose this bill, but if they do not support it, I respect that. I think we should all remember that each and every one of us--elected by the people who send us here--have a voice and we have a right to represent our constituents in the best way that we see possible.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In these debates, oftentimes we find ourselves explaining to people how our committees work, and that is very good that we take the opportunity to do that because I think that, in this complicated system that we work in, people need to understand what we do and how we do it.

I am very appreciative to the chairman for recognizing and giving time to some of our Members today, and I think he will remember that I have done that for him also. I can recall on flood insurance, the National Flood Insurance bill, I was very gracious and I gave Members on the Republican side of the aisle an opportunity to have a say. And not only that, Ex-Im Bank was another instance where I gave time to the Members from the opposite side of the aisle, so I would not like people who are listening to think that somehow this is unusual.

We do use the influence and power of our positions to determine when that makes good sense for us, and I would like to say to the chairman of our committee: There will be other times when I will afford Republicans an opportunity to speak and have their say when you don't feel that that is the proper thing for you to do at that time. So let us all remember how this system works.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, week after week, the majority is continuing to push through bills to roll back critical reforms that Democrats put in place to protect consumers, investors, and our economy. Let's recount some of the bills that the majority has recently pushed through the House:

In recent months, they have passed legislation to allow payday lenders to evade State interest rate caps, decrease operational risk capital requirements, and roll back enhanced prudential standards for the Nation's largest banks; weaken customer protections for mortgages; undermine efforts to combat discriminatory and predatory lending; reduce consumer privacy protections; weaken rules that the financial services industry finds inconvenient; undermine protections for mom- and-pop investors; and allow financial institutions to challenge rules, financial regulations, in court, if they believe them not to be uniquely tailored to their business needs.

Every week, the list of harmful legislation put forth by the majority for House passage grows. H.R. 4061, the so-called Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act is the latest example of the majority's misguided and reckless agenda.

H.R. 4061 helps financial institutions to delay or block heightened oversight and weakens FSOC's ability to protect our economy. Mr. Speaker, this bill ignores th lessons of the past and invites the return to the risky financial system that led to the financial crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my Members to oppose the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Maloney for helping to make sure that we come to the floor this evening so that we can speak up for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening, along with my Democratic colleagues on the Financial Services Committee, to discuss a central component of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mr. Speaker, I really want to thank my colleague, Mrs. Maloney, for organizing this event with me tonight. Mrs. Maloney is a valuable member of the Financial Services Committee and she is also a leader on the Joint Economic Committee, she serves on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

She is a very, very busy Member of this Congress, and I don't know exactly how she finds time to do everything that she does, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve with her, because of her dedication and her commitment, not only to her constituents, but to the citizens of this country, and particularly focused on consumer protection.

The Consumer Bureau is vitally important in protecting American consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by financial institutions all across the country.

Following the financial crisis, Congress created the Consumer Bureau in order to ensure that Americans have a regulator solely focused on ensuring that they are not preyed on by bad actors. The need for such an agency was

made very clear by the 2008 crisis, which was driven by unchecked, deceptive, predatory lending that caused millions of American families to lose their homes.

The Consumer Bureau has been an enormous success, and under the leadership of Richard Cordray, the agency worked exactly as we intended it to. The Consumer Bureau has returned nearly $12 billion to over 30 million consumers who have been harmed by financial institutions. The agency has also addressed more than 1.2 million consumer complaints about financial institutions.

But now Donald Trump has moved to ``do a big number on Dodd-Frank'' and undermine the Consumer Bureau. Despite the fact that the Dodd-Frank statute is very clear that the deputy director of the Consumer Bureau shall serve as acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director, President Trump illegally appointed his Office of Management and Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, to serve as acting director. Because Mr. Mulvaney serves at the pleasure of the President as OMB Director, President Trump now has an inappropriate level of influence over the operations and activities of the Consumer Bureau, which is an independent agency that is supposed to be outside of the authority of the executive branch.

Since his illegal appointment, Mr. Mulvaney has indeed been carrying out President Trump's harmful agenda and working to reverse much of the important progress that the agency has made. This is not surprising given that Mulvaney previously stated, ``I don't like the fact that the CFPB exists,'' and even called the Consumer Bureau a sick, sad joke.

In his short time at the Consumer Bureau, Mr. Mulvaney has stripped the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity of its enforcement and supervisory powers, in a move that badly weakens the agency's ability to crack down on discriminatory lending. He has also taken zero public enforcement actions against financial institutions that harm consumers across the board during his tenure, even though his predecessor, Richard Cordray, initiated hundreds.

In addition, Mr. Mulvaney has taken a series of actions that benefit predatory payday lenders, including the decision to halt implementation of the Consumer Bureau's sensible payday rule, the decision to withdraw a lawsuit against a group of payday lenders that allegedly misled consumers about the cost of loans, which had interest rates as high as 950 percent a year, and the decision to cease an investigation into World Acceptance Corporation, a high-cost installment lender which was reportedly engaging in abusive practices. And, in fact, the former CEO of World Acceptance Corporation felt so comfortable with Mr. Mulvaney, that she had the audacity to send to him a letter requesting that she be appointed to run the whole agency as the director.

So many of us were shocked at the audacity that she exhibited, and tried to find out from Mr. Mulvaney today, I did in particular, why did he halt the lawsuit against her company and why would she send him her resume to ask to be considered for the role of director of the Consumer Bureau.

Mr. Mulvaney's many harmful actions send a signal to bad actors that they can get away with abusing consumers.

What is more, Republicans have relentlessly attacked the Consumer Bureau since its inception. Despite what my Republican colleagues may have you believe, the leadership structure of the Consumer Bureau is not unique. In fact, there are other Federal regulatory agencies with similar structures, but these facts haven't stopped Republicans and some in the industry from making legal challenges to its structure. That is why last year, I led 40 other current and former Members of Congress to file a brief with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the P.H.H. case support of the Consumer Bureau's independent structure and its clear constitutionality. And earlier this year, the court issued a decision upholding the constitutionality of the Consumer Bureau's structure.

Republicans have been clamoring to weaken, impede, and ultimately destroy the Consumer Bureau since its creation. First, they did everything they could to block a director from being appointed in the first place, and since then, they have pushed measures to defund and dismantle the Consumer Bureau. The chairman has called for the Consumer Bureau to be ``functionally terminated,'' and advanced legislation, including H.R. 10, which I call the ``Wrong'' CHOICE Act, to do so.

Now, in Mick Mulvaney, Republicans have an ally to destroy the Consumer Bureau from within, but it is unclear why destroying the Consumer Bureau is at the top of the Republican agenda.

There are constituents in every State who have been ripped off by financial institutions. Why aren't Republicans fighting for them and for their financial security?

Mr. Speaker, Democrats will not allow the Consumer Bureau to be diverted from its statutorily mandated mission of protecting consumers and serving as an independent watchdog.

This agency is crucial for hardworking Americans, and its work must continue.

Mr. Speaker, in my closing, I would like to thank Congresswoman Maloney for the way that she conducted her questions today with Mr. Mulvaney in our committee and asked him how many cases had he taken up, what had he initiated against those companies that are committing fraud, only to find out that he has done nothing. She forced him to answer, and he had to admit, zero, that he has not taken any actions against any companies in this country who are involved in the kind of actions that the Consumer Bureau is designed to deal with and to force them to do the right thing.

So, Mr. Speaker, in that, I would like to thank Congresswoman Maloney for initiating this action this evening that we are taking to make sure everyone understands the importance of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and I appreciate working with her to get this done.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to modify amendment No. 1 printed in House Report 115-613 with the modification placed at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose H.R. 4566, the so-called Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act, which would make it harder for regulators to identify and mitigate hidden systemic risks at nonbank financial companies before they undermine our economy.

Last Wednesday marked 10 years since global investment bank Bear Stearns imploded as a result of its failure to manage risk associated with its highly leveraged balance sheet and exposure to the subprime mortgage market. American taxpayers were forced to come to the rescue to prevent the firm's collapse from spreading to other overleveraged Wall Street institutions.

The demise of Bear Stearns was the canary in the coal mine for the ensuing financial crisis, which ravaged the United States economy, destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, and put millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

Democrats responded to the 2008 financial crisis by passing the Dodd- Frank Act, which, among other reforms, required rigorous stress tests of the Nation's largest financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank Act also gave the Federal Reserve Board the discretion to quickly intervene and stress-test firms that could pose financial stability risk.

If regular stress testing had been conducted on firms like Bear Stearns from 2006 to 2008, it might have revealed major threats to the economy sooner, giving both the companies and Federal financial regulators a better chance to take remedial action to avoid a catastrophic near collapse of the global financial system.

H.R. 4566 would eliminate the Federal Reserve's authority to stress- test nonbank financial companies, even in situations where the firm's designation as systemically important is pending before the Financial Stability Oversight Council, FSOC.

Additionally, the bill would weaken the Dodd-Frank mandate that large financial companies under the SEC and CFTC's purview conduct internal stress tests to determine the company's ability to withstand a recession.

Combined, these rollbacks would allow the Bear Stearns of the world to take on increasing amounts of risk while regulators are tied up in lengthy administrative processes.

As former SEC Chair Mary Jo White stated in a December 2014 speech: ``Stress testing is an important tool routinely used by banking regulators. Implementing this new mandate in asset management, while relatively novel, will help market participation and the Commission better understand the potential impact of stress events.''

I agree with Chair White's comments about the importance of stress testing and think that it simply does not make sound public policy to eliminate this tool.

Members of the asset management industry have also recognized that stress testing is critical to effectively managing risk. In a 2015 letter to the SEC, the Asset Management Group of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, that is SIFMA AMG, whose members manage more than $30 trillion in assets, wrote: ``Stress testing is one part of an effective and coherent risk management process for asset managers, the objective of which is not to test for solvency or capital adequacy, but to complement other approaches in assessing investment risk.''

In fact, in a 2015 survey of SIFMA AMG members, nearly two-thirds of the asset managers surveyed reported that they already stress-test their funds. It seems imprudent that Congress would repeal a requirement for large interconnected hedge funds that may have 15-to-1 leverage to periodically determine whether they could withstand a down economy.

Moreover, given how rapidly failures at large nonbank financial companies can spread across the highly interconnected financial system, regulators must be able to quickly identify problems that could undermine U.S. financial stability. The Federal Reserve should continue to have the discretionary authority to step in to identify and mitigate systemic risk at any financial company whose failure could pose a threat to our economy.

H.R. 4566 appears to ignore that nonbank financial companies like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG played a central role in the financial crisis. When these firms collapsed as a result of their failure to mitigate their own internal risk, their losses sent shockwaves throughout the banking system.

Stress testing these kinds of nonbank financial institutions provides a valuable early warning system for our economy and gives both the companies and regulators a chance to correct problems before they have catastrophic effects on our financial stability. That is why I intend to offer an amendment that, if adopted, would restore the Fed's discretionary authority to stress test any nonbank, provided that the test meet certain conditions, including approval by a majority of FSOC members. It would also allow the Fed to use alternatives to capital, as appropriate, when stress-testing systemically important nonbanks and broaden the SEC's and CFTC's authority to require internal testing for entities under their purview.

This amendment would ensure that large financial institutions, like investment companies that manage trillions of dollars of hardworking Americans' retirement savings, can be appropriately evaluated for their ability to survive in a stressed economy.

While I oppose H.R. 4566 in its current form, I would support an amended version of the bill that preserves the bill's ability to identify and mitigate future systemic risk at nonbanks before they lead to another crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, first, let me thank my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle and my chairman, Mr. Hensarling, for indicating their acceptance of the amendment.

I think it is extremely important for both sides of the aisle to appreciate the necessity and the importance of stress testing, and I think we both do that. The discretion that we afford to the Feds in this bill, I think, is very important. So this is one of those instances when both sides can come together and recognize that there were important indications of what is needed to understand what should be done to avoid another meltdown in our financial services industries and our banks.

Again, I don't think there is any need for us to continue to talk about what we don't like about stress testing, but, rather, we are coming together to talk about how it is done and why it is important. I have a great appreciation for that, and I would like to thank my colleagues for that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased about the work that staff has done on this particular legislation.

I do believe that we all agree that stress tests are important; it is a matter of who, how, and when.

Someone has likened stress tests to car testing, where, in the manufacture of new cars, you take them out on the road and you test them to see if they can withstand what they may be presented with in the terrain and with the kind of things that you would experience perhaps on the roughest roads that they test on. When they determine that there are weaknesses that can be corrected, that is what they do in order to make sure that this new vehicle that they are testing can withstand whatever the difficulties are that may be presented to them when they test a car.

That is what this stress testing is all about. It all about whether or not, in the event of a downturn in our economy, you have the ability to withstand the downturn, whether or not you have the ability to not only withstand what you are presented with in a downturn of the economy, but how you can fix what you have determined is wrong with what you are doing.

So I am, again, very pleased that we all agree that stress testing is extremely important and that we know what your concerns are about hedge fund and asset managers and all of that. But the discretion that we give to the Feds, I think, is very important. The fact that all of the businesses that we are concerned with will be doing their internal stress testing is extremely important.

So, again, I am very grateful for the acceptance of my amendment, and I am hopeful that, with this amendment, it demonstrates that, when we work very hard to reconcile our differences, we can do that.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that, with this amendment, all of the Members of the House vote for this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. Speaker, in its current form, H.R. 4566 eliminates the Fed's discretion to require stress testing on nonbanks that have not yet been designated as systemically important and weakens the Dodd-Frank Act's mandate that the SEC and CFTC require nonbank financial companies under their authority to conduct annual stress tests. Together, these repeals create a loophole that would allow large brokerage firms and mega insurance companies to ignore risks while regulators are tied up in lengthy rulemaking or the FSOC designation process.

My amendment, if adopted, would restore the Fed's discretionary authority to stress-test any nonbank financial firm, provided that the test is requested by a majority vote of the FSOC, is conducted with consideration of the company's business model, and is not already required by the company's primary regulator.

My amendment would also allow the Fed to consider alternatives to the existing capital adequacy test, where appropriate, when conducting stress tests on nonbanks, including those designated as systemically important.

One of the key safeguards created by Dodd-Frank is the Fed's ability to identify and mitigate risks in the financial system before they undermine the U.S. economy. By preserving the Fed's ability to stress- test nonbank financial companies on a discretionary basis, my amendment will give regulators a better chance of preventing the next Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers from dragging down our financial system.

Finally, my amendment would broaden the SEC's and CFTC's authority under the bill by striking the provision that would limit future company-run stress testing requirements to entities with more than $10 billion in assets. This would ensure that the SEC and CFTC can require any financial company under their purview to evaluate their own ability to survive in a stressed economy.

While I oppose H.R. 4566 as currently drafted, with this amendment, the bill would represent a truly bipartisan effort to strengthen Dodd- Frank. Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on my amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for those kind words, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is a very important bill that I am asking the Members of Congress to vote ``no'' on because we don't want to empower the megabanks and huge conglomerates to be able to skirt adverse supervisory decisions about regulators.

The bill would give all financial institutions, regardless of their size, an additional method to appeal, thereby significantly delaying adverse determinations by creating a new independent review office to conduct de novo reviews without concern for the institution's safety and soundness or the protection of consumers.

This bill goes far beyond relief for community banks and credit unions by enabling megabanks and nonbanks, like payday lenders and Equifax, to pursue limitless challenges to the agency's actions in court.

If you take a look at the examples that we have prepared for you, take a look at Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has been at the center of attention in this country for the fraudulent accounts that it established using their customers' accounts and information to create more accounts without informing their customers; and then they had the illegal student loan servicing practices that we have all been so concerned about; and even after the fraudulent accounts were exposed and a fine was made because of the harm that they had caused to their customers, we then found that they had inappropriate force-placed insurance, which means that people who were already paying for their insurance were forced to pay again because the bank basically forced them to have additional insurance.

And then there is J.P. Morgan with illegal credit card practices and discriminatory lending, sale of bad credit card debt, and illegal robo- signing.

And Citi with deficient mortgage servicing and foreclosure processing practices; inappropriate fees, marketing, billing, administration of add-on products; and foreclosure abuses.

Bank of America, also mortgage abuses, deficient mortgage servicing and foreclosure processing practices, credit monitoring abuses, deceptive marketing for add-on products, violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Now, we find that these banks have determined--they act in ways that we know that fighting is just the cost of doing business. It is a slap on the wrist. And they are going to continue to be able to get away with this. And if they are saying that the bank examiners who come in and find these adverse conditions somehow will be ignored and they can literally get around them, then we are going to add to the problems of our consumers in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly asking for a ``no'' vote on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I always have these lively debates with my chairman, and he never fails to point out that I voted for the bailout. And, of course, oftentimes when he comes with one of these deregulation bills, he talks about bipartisan and how he had Democrats. Well, I want you to know the bailout was a bipartisan thing. It was appointed by both Democrats and Republicans at a time when we were in great difficulty in this country.

It was the Bush bailout, and it was Mr. Paulson, appointed by Mr. Bush, who was the Secretary who led it and gave us the advice and had us participate in saving our economy based on the information that he had uncovered about the risk that was now proposed for our country.

So I am not for bailing out big banks at all. We had an emergency situation in this country where, again, it was the Bush bailout that we had to deal with the fact that we were in great danger. But let me just also say this: we have something now that we put into Dodd-Frank reform called the Orderly Liquidation Authority scenario that we are able to look at banks, and, because of the stress testing that they have gone through, if there is a need for an orderly resolution because there are problems with the bank, we cannot only recommend breaking off parts of the bank, but reordering parts of the bank and doing what is necessary to ensure that the bank does not get into a situation where it fails and triggers the failures of others in our economy.

So it is the Orderly Liquidation Authority that I am referring to, and I do not support bailing out big banks. This is one thing that I join with my chairman on. We both agree that we should not be bailing out these big banks. And, of course, that is what Dodd-Frank is helping us to avoid.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the offer from my good friend to join him, but I don't think I will be doing that today.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record organizations that have sent us information in opposition to this bill. It includes the National Consumer Law Center, AFSCME, the Center for American Progress, and Americans for Financial Reform.

National Consumer Law Center,

Washington, DC, March 8, 2017.

Re Oppose S. Amdt. 2140 (Moran), HR 4545, The Financial

Institutions Examination Fairness Act; creates roadblocks

to bank supervision for safety and soundness, consumer

protection.

Senator,

U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.

On behalf of our low income clients, I urge you to oppose

Senate Amendment 2140 to S. 2155, which incorporates HR 4545

(Tipton), The Financial Institutions Examination Fairness

Act. The bill would create unprecedented barriers to

effective prudential and consumer protection supervision of

banks, allowing banks to resist corrective actions to address

law violations or safety and soundness risks, bogging down

agencies with frivolous appeals.

HR 4545 would grant regulated banks the right to appeal any

supervisory determination made by any prudential banking

agency or by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

to a new ``Office of Independent Examination Review''

established in the Federal Financial Institutions

Examinations Council (FFIEC). Upon appeal by a supervised

bank, this new office would be required to undertake a

repetitive de novo review of the agency's supervisory

decision. No deference to the initial examination findings or

the agency's judgment would be required in this review.

This new process is duplicative to appeals processes and

ombudsmen already present. The CFPB, FDIC, OCC, Federal

Reserve, and National Credit Union Administration each

already have an agency ombudsman and an intra-agency formal

review and appeals process. In addition, banks may bring a

court challenge to any formal regulatory enforcement action.

HR 4545 would enormously increase the ability of banks to

resist supervisory decisions. This effect would be most

pronounced at the largest banks, who could appeal dozens or

hundreds of material findings from every examination,

creating enormous roadblocks to supervision. The bank

supervision process has been the first line of regulatory

defense against threats to bank safety and soundness for a

century or more. HR 4545 creates unprecedented roadblocks to

the effectiveness of bank supervisory determinations and

could be devastating to effective regulatory oversight in

areas ranging from basic

prudential oversight to key consumer protections that make

our financial markets fairer.

I urge you to oppose HR 4545 and any amendment that

incorporates the bill.

Yours very truly,

Lauren K. Saunders,

Associate Director.

Mr. Speaker, let me just read one of the paragraphs from the Center for American Progress that I think is so profound.

``The Financial Institutions Examination Fairness and Reform Act, would give financial institutions the authority to appeal any material examination decision rendered by the Federal banking regulators or Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB, to the Office of Independent Examination Review--a new office created by the bill. Financial regulators already have internal appeals processes in place through their respective ombudsman offices and financial institutions can pursue legal remedy for flawed examination decisions through the judicial system.

``This new office and review process is simply an additional hurdle for regulators to contend with when supervising financial institutions and an additional point at which institutions can slow down or avoid punishments. H.R. 4545 would undermine the examinations process at a time when supervisory authority and penalties for financial sector malfeasance should be strengthened.''

In addition to that, there is another paragraph in the letter from Americans for Financial Reform that I think is extremely important in explaining why this bill should be opposed.

It says: ``By layering an entirely new appeals process on top of existing processes, this bill would greatly increase the ability of banks to resist supervisory oversight and ignore or delay changes called for by supervisors. The impact would be most pronounced at the largest banks, which can receive dozens or hundreds of material findings from every examination. The ability to appeal every one of those material supervisory findings, or just to threaten to appeal them, would create an enormous new barrier to effective supervision of big banks.''

In essence, Mr. Speaker, what we are saying is, we have our bank examiners who are going in and looking for ways to strengthen the banks and hoping that they will not find these adverse conditions, but, if they do, they have a responsibility to the consumers to try and get them corrected or to try and get changes made.

This bill says, despite adverse conditions that are discovered, we don't want to have to comply; we don't want to have to change; we don't want to have to correct. We want to fight you. We want to use our vast resources to say your examiners didn't know what they were doing.

They are not so much concerned about the consumers; rather, they are more concerned about just being a part of the bureaucracy.

It doesn't make good sense what they are saying about the examiners and why they are not important.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have left.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4545 is yet another harmful bill that would help out Wall Street and predatory lenders. It has become a theme for the majority to claim that their legislation is meant to provide relief for small community banks, when, in fact, the legislation plainly benefits the Nation's largest banks, including abusive megabanks like Wells Fargo and even payday lenders. This bill is yet another example.

The bill would allow any bank as well as any nonbank supervised by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to appeal negative supervisory determinations made by regulators in the examination process.

H.R. 4545 makes it more likely that bad actors, including predatory megabanks like Wells Fargo, would avoid or delay accountability when they break Federal law. It takes our system of financial regulation in exactly the wrong direction.

Megabanks like Wells Fargo already treat the fines they are required to pay for violations of the law as simply the cost of doing business. They don't need more escape routes to avoid accountability for their wrongdoing.

I have made it clear many times that abusive megabanks with egregious patterns of harming consumers should face steep penalties from regulators. Last year I introduced H.R. 3937, the Megabank Accountability and Consequences Act, which would require the Federal prudential banking regulators to fully utilize existing authorities, such as the ability to shut down a megabank and ban culpable executives and directors from working in the banking industry.

To get tough on megabanks that repeatedly engage in practices that harm consumers, Congress should be focused on measures that strengthen consumer protections, provide tailored, responsible relief for community banks, and ensure that abusive megabanks are held accountable. This bill, which would help megabanks and predatory lenders get off the hook when they break the law, should be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. Speaker, my amendment is fairly straightforward. It would limit the applicability of the exam reforms under H.R. 4545 to only depository institutions with assets less than $10 billion.

I have only heard about community banks and credit unions with respect to concerns regarding their exam process and the ability to enhance the opportunity to appeal exam findings. As Ms. Maloney made clear, when the committee marked up this bill, the sole purpose of the bill was to help community banks and credit unions, so my amendment seeks to narrow the scope of the bill's relief to these small firms.

Congress used a similar $10 billion asset threshold in Dodd-Frank to exempt small banks and credit unions from the Consumer Bureau's supervision, so applying a similar threshold for the purpose of appealing bank supervisory findings makes sense.

Today, 98 percent of all banks and 99.8 percent of all credit unions have less than $10 billion in assets. While I am in favor of sensible relief for smaller financial institutions, I believe that the 2007-2009 financial crisis showed the dangers of weak oversight of these big banks, including a $30 billion bank like IndyMac. The bank's costly failure was the fourth largest in the history of the United States and contributed to the most damaging financial crisis in generations.

As the largest firms pose the greatest risk to the country's economy and the safety and soundness of our financial system, it is only prudent to apply a stringent supervisory approach for the largest institutions. In fact, the GAO issued a report last year criticizing the

Federal Reserve's large bank supervision program, underscoring there is more work that must be done.

I have been pushing bank regulators to deploy the full suite of their enforcement tools against megabanks like Wells Fargo that repeatedly and carelessly break the law and harm millions of consumers. That is why I introduced, again, H.R. 3937, the Megabank Accountability and Consequences Act.

So, no, I do not think it is appropriate to let megabanks like Wells Fargo hijack what should be regulatory relief for community banks so that they can challenge their exams. Nonbanks regulated by the Consumer Bureau, like Equifax or payday lenders, do not need this kind of regulatory relief either.

My amendment narrows the scope of the bill on what should garner broad bipartisan support: sensible relief for the community banks and credit unions that need it.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues who truly want to help community banks and credit unions rather than Wall Street megabanks to support my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4263, the so-called Regulation A+ Improvement Act, is a solution in search of a problem that threatens to undermine protections for mom-and-pop investors and the integrity of our capital markets. The bill would arbitrarily and prematurely increase the maximum amount of securities that private companies can sell each year to the public from $50 million to $75 million under the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation A+ exemption from registration.

Mr. Speaker, such a change makes no sense. First, the SEC only recently implemented Regulation A+ pursuant to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, the JOBS Act. Effective June 19, 2015, that rule now allows private companies to raise either $20 million under Tier 1 or $50 million under Tier 2 from the public with less investor protections and oversight than a public securities offering registered with the

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have extensive information here about what is happening with Regulation A+. At first, I decided that some of this information I wouldn't share because I am so anxious for these small businesses to be able to access capital, but I think that, you know, some of my earlier concerns, perhaps, may have been justified.

H.R. 4263, the so-called Regulation A+ Improvement Act, is opposed by consumer and investor advocates. I would like to take a moment to read some of their statements in opposition to this bill.

Consumer Federation of America:

``This bill would increase the offering limit, despite the fact that the SEC already has unlimited authority to raise the cap as it deems appropriate. Moreover, the SEC is required to review the offering limit every 2 years, with its next analysis expected to be released next month. . . . A vote for this bill, before the SEC has had a chance to complete its analysis, is a vote against evidence-based policymaking.

``If Congress were to take the time to consider the research that the SEC has conducted on the Regulation A markets since the Regulation A+ rules were adopted, it would find that there currently is no need to raise the limit . . . data suggest that issuers generally are not clamoring for more capital than is currently allowed to them under the rules. . . .

``The market's tepid reaction to Regulation A offerings is surely also related to the largely abysmal performance of Regulation A offerings to date. . . . A recent Barron's article provided an in-depth review of the Regulation A market, describing the `woeful performance' of the few dozen companies that are currently exchange-listed and the difficulty trading or getting a price quote for the vast majority of companies that aren't exchange listed. The Barron's article further described how `most Reg. A+ businesses haven't gotten beyond the startup phase known as the pipedream.' Some examples that the article cites include businesses seeking capital for cannabis paraphernalia, flying cars, studying UFOs, telepathy, and light-speed travel. We wonder why the backers of this legislation would spend so much time and effort seeking to artificially prop up businesses of this sort.

``And while Regulation A's supporters have touted Regulation A's job creating potential, the Barron's article states that the only people Regulation A clearly has created jobs for are Regulation A underwriters and promoters on Wall Street, many of whom have `checkered stock market histories.'''

Are these really the sort of jobs Congress is intending to promote?

``In conclusion, because this bill arbitrarily increases the offering limit without evidence that doing so is either necessary or beneficial, and in the face of evidence that Regulation A offerings to date largely have been market failures, we urge you to vote `no.'''

Let me just continue to quote. Americans for Financial Reform: ``This is an unwarranted increase in the threshold. Most fundamentally, Congress should not be undermining public securities markets by expanding the ability of larger companies to make offerings while being exempt from core disclosure and investor protection requirements. Private offerings were designed to permit early stage capital raising from sophisticated investors by small companies, but the current cap of $50 million per year in private capital raising already permits fairly large companies to take advantage of this route. Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, already has regulatory authority to increase the current threshold, which they examine on a biannual basis. . . .

``Seven of the eight companies with Regulation A+ offerings in 2017 are down 42 percent from their offer prices, as compared to conventional offerings made during the same period, which are up 22 percent from offer prices. This is to be expected, given that Regulation A+ permits companies to avoid requirements such as disclosures that were designed to protect investors. If it expanded such exemptions, Congress would facilitate increased harm to investors.

``Members should also take notice that with the blockchain and cryptocurrency fever, SEC filing and disclosure exemptions like Regulation A+ are becoming a popular avenue for initial coin offerings, ICOs. . . .

``In the middle of this SEC crackdown on fraudulent ICOs, H.R. 4263 would potentially expose a larger number of investors--including nonaccredited, unsophisticated investors--to shady companies, Ponzi schemes, and exit scams.

``The widespread use of private offerings reduces transparency and investor protections in capital markets. Raising capital under Regulation A+ should be used as an on-ramp to a true public offering and not as an end in itself for larger issuers. Increasing the annual threshold for exempted Regulation A+ offerings goes in the opposite direction.''

Public Citizen had this to say:

``Evidence shows little demand for this measure. A study by the SEC of Regulation A+ offerings found that the average issuer sought only $18 million. Moreover, these firms pose risk for investors, as the issuers had only an average of $50,000 in cash; no property, plants, and equipment; no revenues; and no net income. Increasing access to capital with no additional investor protections exacerbates the problem.''

And so, yes, I do oppose the bill. Let me just say this. I would like small businesses to do well. I would like our small businesses to have access to the capital that they need to support, you know, good ideas that have been given the kind of research that is necessary to determine the potential for some of these businesses.

You just heard this information from the Barron report. This is serious. What we have seen, despite the fact what we want to happen, is that it is not happening. The fact that we would like very much--and we have done everything that we could do with the JOBS Act to give support to our small businesses because we want them to thrive. We believe that they are job intensive, if they can get up and get going. It is not happening.

What we are doing is we are exposing these little mom-and-pop investors to situations where they are going to lose what small amounts of money they are investing. So let's just be cool, let's be calm, and let's give the SEC the opportunity to do its analysis. There is no reason to push this now.

I would ask my Members on the opposite side of the aisle to rethink and to join with me, oppose the bill so that we can give the SEC the opportunity, again, to do the kind of analysis it needs to do, and let's think about what else can we do to help small businesses, rather than continue down the road of failure, because this is exactly what is being exposed.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4263 is just another reckless partisan bill that could harm mom-and-pop investors and weaken the integrity of the U.S. capital markets. It continues the efforts to repeal or weaken important regulatory protections under the guise of supporting jobs.

Not only have my Republican colleagues failed to come up with any real data or analysis to support this claim, but they also completely substitute their own judgment for that of the SEC, the agency with the expertise over these issues.

As I have already said, we only have to wait a few more weeks to see if the SEC decides to expand the Regulation A+ exemption and to understand its rationale for the decision. But I suppose a few weeks is a few weeks too long for my friends on the opposite side of the aisle who are currently pushing for as many of these kinds of bills as possible to be included in the Senate's Dodd-Frank rollback.

Those bad bills would cause further harm to investors by allowing newly public companies to avoid audits of their controls over financial reporting for a decade; by hampering investors' ability to get independent, reliable information ahead of a shareholder meeting; and by making it easier for fraudsters to swindle unsophisticated investors into buying stock in a fake or failing company.

It should come as no surprise that these same harmful provisions show up in the CHOICE Act, which is 10 times worse than the Senate's deregulatory bill.

Mr. Speaker, both Democrats and Republicans want to help small businesses grow and create jobs, but as Members of Congress, we also have the responsibility to protect investors, particularly retail investors, who are looking to save for retirement, to buy a house, or to support our children's education.

As I have repeatedly said, any regulation must strike the right balance between capital formation in our securities markets and investor protection. This bill fails to do that, and that is why it is opposed by consumer and investor advocates like Americans for Financial Reform, Consumer Federation of America, and Public Citizen.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge all Members to join me in standing up for investors and vote ``no'' on H.R. 4263, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1116, the so-called Taking Account of Institutions with Low Operation Risk Act of 2017, or the TAILOR Act.

This bill would weaken important safeguards established since the financial crisis by requiring agencies on the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council--composed of the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency--to perform a biased analysis that favors lessening the costs for industry over protecting consumers and the economy.

It was 10 years ago today that Bear Stearns collapsed and the Federal Reserve used taxpayer funding to arrange a shotgun wedding to J.P. Morgan to avoid a catastrophe. We now know that much, much worse was to come, when AIG, Lehman Brothers, the money market fund industry, and hundreds of banks, including all of the largest ones, would need a bailout. And this says nothing of the tremendous damage inflicted on the millions of Americans whose homes were lost to foreclosure, the millions who lost their jobs, and the trillions of dollars of wealth that evaporated.

Congress took decisive action to ensure that we were never caught unaware again when it passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Although some claim that the measure that is now before us is aimed at helping community banks, that is not the case. If enacted, this bill would provide all financial institutions, including the largest banks, with opportunities to challenge any and every regulation in court if they felt it was not, so-called, uniquely tailored to their business needs.

This bill would ignore the mandates and requirements of all other laws passed by Congress and override decades of well-established administrative law requirements by subjecting all new financial rules to a vague, if not impossible, standard to meet. This includes an undefined standard of appropriateness and a vague standard of the ability to serve evolving and diverse customer needs; and, importantly, the legislation includes no similar mandate that regulators consider the benefits of Federal regulations, including the promotion of our Nation's financial stability or the protection of our consumers.

Let us not forget that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the centerpiece of this Dodd-Frank reform. Prior to Dodd-Frank, our consumers had nobody looking out for them. They were left and they were taken advantage of, and so that is why we have Dodd-Frank reform.

But it seems that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle have forgotten about all of this. This set of standards that they are promoting not only applies to all future guidance and rulemaking, but retroactively to all of the rulemakings in the past 7 years, which, conveniently for the industry, covers all rules under the Dodd-Frank Act.

But financial regulators already have to go through extensive look- back reviews to refine and improve rules that make sense. In fact, under the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act, or EGRPRA, which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were just last week calling the gold standard for how regulators should review regulations, the Federal Reserve, OCC, and FDIC are already required to review their rules once every 10 years.

During this review, the regulators must identify whether regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome and consider how to reduce regulatory burdens on insured depository institutions while, at the same time, ensuring safety and soundness.

The Consumer Bureau engages in a similar look-back review 5 years after a significant rule takes effect.

Make no mistake: I support tiered and tailored regulations for community banks and credit unions, but week after week, we have been on this House floor debating deregulatory gifts to Wall Street instead of moving legislation that actually benefits community banks and credit unions.

I know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and I have differences about Dodd-Frank, but something we worked hard to do in crafting those critical reforms was to make sure that the law did not impose a one-size-fits-all approach on every financial institution. So, as you can see, the toughest rules focus on the largest and most complex financial firms that, as we saw in the crisis, can destabilize the financial system and inflict lasting damage to the economy and constituents we serve.

We have monitored Dodd-Frank's implementation carefully and pushed regulators to tailor rules to reduce unnecessary compliance burdens while maintaining appropriate protections and safeguards for consumers, investors, and taxpayers.

We must continue to take this type of targeted approach instead of advancing measures like H.R. 1116, this bill

that we are talking about right now, which would force the regulators to prioritize costs to Wall Street over benefits to consumers and the economy and expose rulemaking to needless litigation because of the nebulous standards in the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), a member of the Financial Services Committee, ranking member of the Small Business Committee, and a senior member, of course, of our Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am always amazed at the deregulatory bills that are produced by the opposite side of the aisle, and I keep wondering why there are so many attempts to provide the banks and the financial institutions, the largest banks in this country, opportunities to make even more money.

According to an estimate from Goldman Sachs, the Republicans' tax scam bill represents a giant windfall for Wall Street megabanks. So we are here with another bill to deregulate, basically to talk about tailoring. Let me just redefine this tailoring. It just means changing, modifying, coming up with ways that the banks can basically complain about their costs and their burdens. But my friends continue to basically support them in whatever efforts they want in order to make more money.

This report that I just referred to estimates that all of the largest banks, eight of the largest banks, will receive $15 billion windfalls on their 2018 tax bill. This includes $3.7 billion for Wells Fargo, $3.5 billion for Bank of America, $3.3 billion for JPMorgan, $1.4 billion for Citigroup, and $1 billion for Goldman Sachs.

What more do they want? How much more can you give them? What is the next deregulatory bill that you will come with on this floor?

It is interesting to note that the Financial Services Committee is responsible for over 50 percent, or at least 50 percent, of all of the bills coming through the Rules Committee that come to the floor, which means that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle have spent an inordinate amount of time coming up with legislation dealing with deregulation of these big banks.

Now, we have a lot of things that we could be doing to protect consumers, working people, and families in that committee. I wish we would spend a lot more time on HUD. The homeless population in this country is expanding. It is exploding all over the country. In New York and California, in the Midwest--you name it--people are on the streets.

Do you think we have been able to have a hearing on homelessness in this committee? No, because all of this time is spent on supporting the biggest banks in America and deregulating in ways that will cause them to be able to make more and more money.

How much more do they want? How much more do they need? How much time is this Congress going to spend on trying to undo Dodd-Frank and kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

I don't know the answers to these questions, Mr. Speaker. And I wish they would answer me, but no, I know they are not going to. They are simply going to come and talk about tailoring. Well, tailoring just means changing, fixing in a way that will benefit the biggest banks.

Mr. Speaker, I will let them continue with their deregulatory efforts.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am perplexed and somewhat amused by the statement that the community banks are just withering on the vine.

Well, let me just talk about what is happening in the banking community. Dodd-Frank is not hampering the banking sector at all. In 2016, the industry made record profits of $171 billion, and community banks are outperforming their larger peers. At the end of 2016, lending was up 8.3 percent for community banks and 4.8 percent for larger banks. Credit unions are expanding, and they have increased their membership by more than 16 million since 2010, an increase of 18 percent.

We oftentimes talk about what we are doing to the community banks. But we always--you, rather, always have a way of making sure that big banks are attached to this deregulation that you say you want to do for community banks. All you have to do is amend this bill and make it apply only to community banks.

Would the gentleman who is talking about what the ranking member should understand and should be thinking about be willing to amend the bill so that it only applies to community banks?

That is rhetorical, and I won't ask for an answer.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I was just reviewing this bill somewhat and it has come to my attention that this so-called tailoring, which really means modifying, changing, doing something different, is for each individual bank.

So each individual bank could say: We do things this way, so we want a rule that is tailored especially for us.

Another bank could say: We do things another way, and we want some separate rules just for us.

And on and on for every bank.

Is this what this is all about? Is this what this so-called tailoring is about? This tailoring, which is modifying,

changing, basically deregulating in the interest of the big banks to make sure they can reduce their costs and get rid of what they would call their burdens?

Are you really talking about having our regulators look at each bank and say: You do business a little bit different, so we are going to change the rules just to fit your bank?

Well, Mr. Speaker, it doesn't seem to me as if this is plausible. This does not make good sense. I don't understand why my friends on the opposite side of the aisle, in their deregulatory efforts, would even try this one. This one doesn't work.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that my colleague on the opposite side of the aisle, Congressman Lucas, enjoys engaging in these discussions also. I watched very closely his countenance, and I see that he is enjoining it even more than I ever dreamed he would. So let us continue with this very lively debate where we can at least lift the spirits of each other as we go through our daily work.

Having said that, the chairman likes to say that we lose a community bank a day. However, last year, only eight banks failed.

The other 230 banks merged with others, and I would like the chairman to even acknowledge that long before Dodd-Frank, we were losing a bank a day, and that trend had been going on for 30 years. So I do not wish us to think that something new and extraordinary is happening, that somehow we have come to a point in time in the banking world where banks are being lost on a daily basis in a way that they have not been lost before.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I keep hearing my colleagues talk about one size does not fit all and they keep trying to make a case for the community banks, but they always tie the community banks to these deregulatory efforts so that the big banks can benefit from it.

When I take a look at the Dodd-Frank requirements and how they target the largest banks, let's take a look at those banks that are less than $10 billion in assets. They don't have to comply with all of these regulations.

If they are a little bit bigger, they are between $10 billion and $50 billion, they have to comply with just a few more, but not as many as the large banks. If they are $50 billion to $250 billion, yes, we have a few more requirements for them. And then the big boys, the big banks, yes, we have more oversight and more requirements.

Do you know why? Because they put this entire economy at risk if they fail.

When we talk about doing all of the stress-testing, we are stress- testing on these banks because we know that, in the event of an economic downfall, if they don't have the capital, if they don't have the kinds of things that would keep them safe, they could trigger another recession.

So stop saying that one size does not fit all and trying to make people believe that somehow we are requiring the same thing of the small community bank as we are requiring of the big bank. It is absolutely not true.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have left.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Members, and to my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle, I am going to take a couple of minutes to bore you. I am going to bore you with all of the groups who are opposed to your legislation.

I heard one of your Members say that you have tremendous support. I didn't hear where that support is coming from, but I do believe that probably the biggest banks in America are supporting your legislation. So please allow me to share with you who is opposing your legislation.

Allied Progress; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Americans for Financial Reform; the Arkansans Against Abusive Payday Lending; Center for American Progress; Center for Economic Integrity; Center for Justice and Democracy; Center for Responsible Lending; Consumer Action; Consumer Federation of America; Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety; Consumers Union; Demos; the Florida Alliance for Consumer Protection; Indivisible; Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility; Jacksonville Area Legal Aid Incorporated; the Kentucky Equal Justice Center; the NAACP; the National Association of Consumer Advocates; the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys; the National Center for Law and Economic Justice; the National Coalition for the Homeless; the National Consumer Law Center, on behalf of its low-income clients; the National Consumers League; the National Fair Housing Alliance; the National Urban League; the People's Action Institute; PolicyLink; Progressive Congress Action Fund; Prosperity Now; Public Citizen; Public Justice Center; Reinvestment Partners; Statewide Poverty Action Network; Tennessee Citizen Action; U.S. PIRG; West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy; the Woodstock Institute; and the World Privacy Forum.

If you have time, I would like you to share with me who is supporting your legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I am prepared to close, so I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the majority is continuing to move to roll back important financial regulations at a furious pace. Week after week, the majority pushes harmful bills through the House. This bill is just the latest example.

In recent months, this deregulatory frenzy has included House passage of bills that, among other things, allow payday lenders to evade State interest cap rates, decrease operational risk capital requirements and roll back enhanced prudential standards for the Nation's largest banks, weaken consumer protections for mortgages, undermine efforts to combat discriminatory and predatory lending, reduce consumer privacy protections, and threaten the stability of our financial system and economy.

Last week, Republicans pushed through H.R. 4607, another bill that is designed to weaken rules considered inconvenient by the financial services industry, despite the harm that could result for consumers and the economy.

As we have discussed, the bill we are debating today, H.R. 1116, would allow large financial institutions to challenge financial regulations in court if they believe them not to be uniquely tailored to their business needs. It includes a provision that would allow these challenges for all of the financial regulations put in place following the financial crisis, making all of the important Dodd-Frank reforms targets.

Of course, the legislation is totally silent on the need for regulators to consider the interest of consumers and to ensure the stability of our economy as they conduct rulemakings.

Ultimately, this bill would serve to put consumers and the financial system at risk by subjecting important regulations to endless litigation. It is designed to block and bog down important rules that were put in place following the financial crisis to protect consumers, investors, and our economy.

I would simply urge Members to oppose H.R. 1116, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as this month is Women's History Month, it is my honor to rise today to recognize my distinguished colleague, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), as she becomes the longest serving woman in the history of the United States House of Representatives.

On March 18, 2018, Congresswoman Kaptur will have served in the House for 35 years, or a total of 12,858 days.

While Congresswoman Kaptur earns a notable place in American history for her length of service, her true accomplishment is the profound impact that she has had on this Nation through her legislative work, her leadership, her representation of the northern Ohio district, and her steadfast commitment to addressing critically important issues.

I think about Congresswoman Kaptur every evening that I am in Washington, D.C., because when I leave the Capitol, I drive past the marvelous beautiful World War II national memorial, which would not exist but for the tireless work of Congresswoman Kaptur.

After being approached by a constituent, Congresswoman Kaptur first proposed legislation in 1987. She began a yearlong effort to have that legislation enacted into law, and turned the World War II monument into a reality.

Congresswoman Kaptur's commitment to that project symbolizes what her colleagues know about her. Marcy Kaptur is one of the hardest working Members of the United States Congress, and she is one of the most dedicated advocates for the people and the values that she represents.

Congresswoman Kaptur is a community organizer and a serious public policymaker. She serves on the House Appropriations Committee, where she is an incredibly powerful voice for appropriate spending levels for programs and projects important to working families across the country.

She serves as the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies, where she has been tremendously impactful on promoting U.S. energy independence and the protection of the natural resources.

Congresswoman Kaptur previously served on the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, which is now known as the Committee on Financial Services.

As the current ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, I am grateful that Congresswoman Kaptur has not lost interest in financial issues. In fact, she has remained extremely engaged on issues pertaining to Wall Street. She has been a leader in responding to issues that arose or were painfully identified during the financial crisis.

Congresswoman Kaptur and I regularly speak about financial services matters. She shares articles and materials with me about key individuals on Wall Street. She finds and shares information with me on individuals' and firms' involvement in creating financial products or engaging in activities that might be harmful to consumers.

I am thankful to have the benefit of her thoughts on these matters. Congresswoman Kaptur has the courage of her convictions even in the face of fierce opposition. Since the 1990s, the Congresswoman has been a proponent for the reestablishment of the Glass-Steagall barriers between investment banking and traditional depository banks. Although her legislation on this matter has been considered controversial, Congresswoman Kaptur has stood by her convictions out of a sincere desire for protecting working families and Main Street over the interests of Wall Street.

Congresswoman Kaptur supports policies that are good for her district without hesitation. For instance, she fought tirelessly to combat threats to Lake Erie. Congresswoman Kaptur is a strong advocate in so many areas like national security, energy independence, and support for the Armed Forces. Her attention to important issues, her dedication, her skills as a legislator, and her work ethic should serve as an example for all public servants. I am proud and honored to call Marcy Kaptur not only my colleague, but my friend.

So I would like to say congratulations to Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur for taking her place in American history as the longest serving woman in the House. I would like to say to the Congresswoman that I am not so sure that I should have worked with others to sneak up on her tonight and make this a surprise, and I know that, in doing that, she has been sitting there thinking about working on and coming up with things that should be said about Wall Street. But tonight we are talking about Marcy Kaptur, we are not talking about Wall Street. We will talk about that later on.

But let me just say that the gentlewoman has been a wonderful and extremely acknowledgeable voice and someone who understands the history, not only of Wall Street, but many of the players who have played over the years who were responsible for some of the problems that caused us to have the recession that we got involved in in 2008.

So I thank the gentlewoman for her caring about Main Street, and I thank the gentlewoman for knowing and spending time on these financial issues

despite the fact she has so many other things on her plate. Again, I feel very honored to be her friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), who is the dean of the Ohio delegation.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas, Representative Louie Gohmert.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members will have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, prior to wrapping up this session of friends who care so much about Marcy Kaptur, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) not to talk about Wall Street.

Mr. Speaker, there are some wonderful moments in this institution. There are times when we are not always pleased and we don't feel as if anything is getting done, but then there are times like these when we have the opportunity to pay tribute to and to recognize one of our Members who have made tremendous contributions, someone who loves this institution and has worked hard to ensure that we get the best out of it.

I am just pleased and proud that I have been a part of not only the recognition that we have done today, both in the reception that was held earlier for Congresswoman Kaptur, and for being able to be on this floor this evening and spend this opportunity with my other colleagues who helped us to understand the vast knowledge and contributions that this Congresswoman has made to this institution and all of the advice and mentoring that she has done for so many.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4607, the so-called Comprehensive Regulatory Review Act. So instead of advancing legislation that improves our financial regulatory framework, the Republican majority is pushing yet another bill that is a giveaway to Wall Street and predatory lenders.

Let's be clear. This bill is intended to dismantle rules considered inconvenient by the financial services industry. If this bill were enacted, financial services regulators would be forced to spend more time and resources on backward-looking reviews and deregulating the financial services industry rather than strengthening protections for consumers and the economy.

Allow me to explain. The Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act, or EGRPRA, currently requires the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the OCC to conduct a review of the regulations that they have issued in order to identify outdated or otherwise unnecessary regulatory requirements imposed on insured depository institutions.

The banking regulators conduct this review every 10 years, but until now, this review has been a relatively balanced, careful assessment that the banking regulators have done twice in the last two decades, and the regulators have taken this process seriously.

The last review took about 3 years to complete. It involved field hearings and public engagement. The final review included many balanced and thoughtful recommendations to improve rules. Many of these would provide relief for community banks and credit unions but in a way that also maintains safeguards for consumers and protects the interests of the public and the broader economy.

Unfortunately, H.R. 4607, this bill, would make three major mistakes in changing the current review process. First, this bill actually requires regulators to change regulations so that they are less costly and burdensome for ``covered persons.''

Well, who are these covered persons? Are they the millions of consumers who were harmed by Wells Fargo's scheme to open fraudulent accounts without their knowledge? Were they? No.

Are they the many consumers who learned just a few days ago that Citigroup violated the law by charging them too much interest on their credit cards? No, no.

Are these covered persons in this bill the Latino or African-American families who were discriminated against by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and so many other banks steering them into more costly mortgages when they qualified for more affordable loans? No, not at all.

Are they--the ones who are being protected--are they seniors or servicemembers who fall prey to payday lenders that trap them in a cycle of debt? No.

Are they college graduates who are harassed by debt collectors for their student loan debt? No.

Under this bill, Mr. Speaker, covered persons are defined as ``any person that engages in offering or providing a consumer financial product or service; and any affiliate of''--such--``person . . . if such affiliate acts as a service provider to such person.'' You know what that means? You know who these so-called covered persons in this bill are who they are talking about? That means Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, payday lenders, mortgage brokers, debt collectors, and thousands of other financial companies.

All of these companies would get easier rules that limit their costs and burdens without appropriately considering the impact they are going to have on their customers. And this bill does nothing, absolutely nothing, to strengthen protections for consumers where there might be deficiencies or gaps in our regulatory framework.

Second, unlike the other banking regulators, which are tasked with ensuring the safety and soundness of the financial services sector, the Consumer Bureau's unique mission is the protection of consumers and of ensuring that the consumer marketplace operates in a fair, transparent, and competitive manner.

Although it may make sense for the banking agencies to periodically review their prudential rules, with a focus on their regulated entities, the Consumer Bureau should be making sure that its rules are appropriately protecting consumers and the interests of the public, not the big financial corporations.

In addition, the Consumer Bureau is already subject to unique accountability and oversight measures that the other financial regulators are not. These special checks and balances include the requirement that the Consumer Bureau have small business review panels as a part of its rulemaking process and the ability of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, that is, FSOC, to repeal any of its final rules. And the Consumer Bureau is already required to review all of the significant rules within 5 years of the time they go into effect, but in a balanced--balanced--manner.

The third problem with H.R. 4607 is that it would make it harder for the regulators to do their jobs. The bill would require a comprehensive review of all banking and consumer protection regulations once every 7 years instead of every decade. If regulators take these reviews as seriously as their previous reviews, as I believe they would, then that would mean they would be tied up spending nearly half of each 7-year cycle doing regulatory reviews instead of supervising their regulated entities and enforcing the law.

This bill would impose an unbalanced review process on regulators that favors industries' wishes--favors industries' wishes over consumers and the economy. The methodology in this bill promotes deregulation. That is what this is all about. This is a bill about deregulation instead of creating a robust process to identify gaps or deficiencies in oversight that harm consumers, undermine the safety and soundness of our financial system, or jeopardize the country's financial stability.

So I cannot support a bill that forces the Consumer Bureau to weaken rules for Wall Street and payday lenders. I am talking about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I urge my colleagues to oppose

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I knew that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle would basically refer to small banks.

This is what is normally done when we see deregulatory efforts being made. They talk about how they are trying to help small and community banks, and they fail to talk about the major financial institutions that I have talked about in my presentation that are the beneficiaries, also, of this deregulatory effort that is being put forth.

When I take a look at the existing law now and the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act, I see that their mission is to conduct a review of their regulations to identify outdated or otherwise unnecessary regulatory requirements imposed on insured depository institutions.

This deregulatory bill that we have before us goes a lot further. As I said, it is about deregulation, and it is about reducing cost and liability risk. This does not benefit our consumers at all.

Again, what we would do in the passage of this bill is simply open up opportunities for the big banks and financial institutions to get rid of the kind of oversight, the kind of laws that we have worked so hard for because it is inconvenient for them or it interferes with their bottom line in some way.

So I do not want our Members to be tricked or fooled to think, number one, this is simply about further getting rid of paperwork or that this is about supporting the small banks. This is about new ways by which to deregulate so that the big banks that are now found to be defrauding, found to be discriminating, found to be doing things like Wells Fargo has done, this is about deregulation that will further enhance their ability to do the kinds of things that we claim to be so opposed to and that harm our consumers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that they are now including by way of H.R. 4607 should be looked at very carefully.

First of all, my friends on the opposite side of the aisle hate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They want to get rid of it. They have tried, time and time again, to undermine it in so many ways. The President has sent Mr. Mulvaney over there, who is supposed to be over at the Office of Management and Budget, to basically destroy it.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow the Members of Congress to be tricked or fooled that somehow this is helpful that they are bringing in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What they want to do is tie the hands of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and basically change their mission from protection for consumers to deregulation for the biggest banks in America.

Why do we have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? That is the centerpiece of the Dodd-Frank reform legislation that we worked so hard on.

Are we forgetting about what happened in 2008?

Are with forgetting about the recession that was caused by the big banks who had been involved with all of these exotic products and ways by which they were enticing would-be homeowners to try and get mortgages?

We can't forget about all of that. We have to know that not only did we have a recession, we were headed for a depression. Dodd-Frank reform has gone a long way toward eliminating some of the bad practices that were in place that got us into that situation in the first place.

Now, little by little, my friends on the opposite side of the aisle keep trying to creep in with new ways that they can support these big banks and financial institutions and deregulate and let them get in the position again where they are tricking our consumers, where they are coming up with these exotic products that caused our consumers to eventually get into foreclosure, and that would allow the big banks again, like Wells Fargo, to come up with all of these tricks that they use in order to enhance their bottom line. I think we are smarter than this, and I don't think that we are going to go for this legislation that is just another way to open the doors to deregulate.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, before I proceed with my closing, I would just like to make a few comments about some of the information that was shared with us by Members on the opposite side of the aisle. I want to remind them that these poor little banks that you are talking about, which include all of the big banks in America, made record profits in 2016--more than $170 billion--and they are going to make billions more from that tax bill, that tax scam giveaway to Wall Street. Lending is up 75 percent since 2010.

So when my friends on the opposite side of the aisle continue to talk about how the banks are suffering, I don't know who they are talking about. As a matter of fact, the real bipartisanship of this committee is about community banks, and Democrats have led and will continue to lead on every way and everything that we can do for community banks.

Mr. Speaker, I notice that when my friends on the opposite side of the aisle come in with deregulation, they frame it in such a way that you would think that it is all about community banks, when, in fact, they always attach anything they do for community banks to the biggest banks in America.

So, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4607 demonstrates just how much my colleagues on the other side of the aisle value the interests of Wall Street over families and consumers on Main Street.

This bill would direct the banking, credit union, and consumer protection regulators to loosen their rules to benefit bad actors on Wall Street. The bill doesn't even allow regulators to consider how to improve safeguards to better protect consumers.

It is absurd that we are here today discussing yet another bill that leads to massive deregulation and seeks to tip the scales in favor of the financial industry. The interests of the public are what we should be focused on.

This bill is yet another piece of the harmful and reckless Republican agenda. Only a few months ago, Republicans jammed their tax scam legislation through this Chamber. They added $1.8 trillion to the Federal debt in order to line the pockets of Wall Street and other megacorporations with billions in tax cuts, leaving families on Main Street and generations of their children just to pick up the tab. Democrats rejected that terrible piece of legislation and should now reject H.R. 4607 as well.

Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 200 consumer civil rights, investor, retiree, community, labor, faith-based, and business groups said that H.R. 4607, ``contains no consideration of the public benefits that are the justification for creating the regulations in the first place, and which regulators should be seeking to preserve. Any mandate to tailor regulations must include consideration of public benefits, rather than being a one-sided directive to reduce business costs.'' I agree.

For Members who are concerned with maintaining strong protections, I would highlight that Trump's OMB Director, Mick Mulvaney, has been illegally installed as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is working every day to dial back the important work of the Consumer Bureau from within.

Congress should not be giving Mr. Mulvaney, or anyone the President eventually appoints and is confirmed to serve as the next Director of the Consumer Bureau, a green light to gut consumer protections and reduce the Consumer Bureau's ability to hold bad actors accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 4607, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 4296. This bill is simply another rollback of rules put in place after the financial crisis. It would undermine the stability of our country's largest financial banks by restricting the way regulators set capital requirements for these institutions.

Before I get into why this bill is problematic, let me take a moment to clarify what capital is and what it is not.

Some have said that capital is money that is held on the side or in reserve and cannot be used to lend to borrowers. This couldn't be further from the truth. Capital is not a reserve. Capital refers to the terms of the financing a bank receives.

In the most simplistic example, a bank receives funds from customers making deposits, loans it receives from other institutions, and stock it has issued to investors. The bank uses all of these sources of funding to make mortgages and other loans to customers. However, there are important differences.

Bank debt has terms like regular interest payments that, if it stops paying, the bank fails.

However, a bank can stop paying dividends on a stock without it failing. Banks funded with lots of debt are described as being higher leveraged and risky because only a small drop in the value of their mortgages and other assets can cause them to default.

Funding a bank through higher levels of capital makes the bank stronger, because even if the loans it has made lose value, the bank can avoid default by temporarily halting payments to their investors or lowering the value of the stock.

H.R. 4296 would impact something called operational risk capital, which is the capital used to cover the possibility of losses to the largest banks caused from their operational failures, such as rogue traders, fraudulent sales practices, and cyber breaches.

H.R. 4296 would diminish this type of capital, which only about 10 megabanks are required to maintain under an enhanced framework, by restricting the information that regulators can use to determine the appropriate balance of safe funding, like bank stock versus debt, that megabanks should have to address potential operational losses that may occur.

The bill would direct regulators to primarily consider a megabank's current activities and not their past behavior when setting the capital level, thereby enabling the bank to take on more debt.

According to Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 200 civil rights, consumer, labor, business, investor, faith-based, and civic and community groups:

``While current activities are obviously central to operational risk, and are already treated as such, the recent loss experience of banks is the best concrete evidence regulators usually have as to the magnitude of current and future risks. Recent past activities are also vital to understanding the future exposures of the bank, including potential legal exposures.''

Thus, this change to how regulators determine the appropriate amount megabanks should maintain for operational risk is imprudent. A megabank's past actions are often the best indicators of future potential risks that it may experience.

Well, memories seem to quickly fade in Congress about the problems that led to the last financial crisis, so let me list some of the examples of past megabanks' operational failures by J.P. Morgan's ``London Whale'' trades and Wells Fargo's long list of violations that have ripped off millions of consumers, including those harmed by their fraudulent accounts scandal.

Given these examples of past misconduct, the megabanks have collectively paid more than $160 billion in fines since 2010. It is absurd to suggest that their past behavior shouldn't be taken into account when determining how much capital they should hold.

Even the Basel Committee, which several of President Trump's appointees now serve on, agreed in December, when they finalized Basel III reforms from where the operational risk capital originates, writing:

``Banks which have experienced greater operational risk losses historically are assumed to be more likely to experience operational risk losses in the future.''

So it makes no sense to have a forward-looking assessment that deemphasizes a megabank's past failures in setting these capital requirements. It is almost as if this bill is saying: ``Don't pay any attention to that. No matter how bad they have been, don't look at their past performance. We don't want you to look at that, because we know if you do, you will make a different decision about capital requirements.''

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill's changes would cost the Federal Government $22 million. This calculation was based on the fact that the capital change would not only affect the bank's probability of failure, but also the magnitude of future losses to our entire financial stability, which, in turn, affects the overall U.S. economy.

This is not a bill to help community banks. It has nothing to do with community banks. Let me repeat that. This is not a bill to help community banks, so what we wish we would not hear is someone coming up talking about how it is going to hurt community banks. That is often used as an excuse. When we are trying to rein in these megabanks, they always lop in the community banks with it. This has nothing to do with community banks. This is a bill for the 10 largest banks in this country.

So the megabanks on Wall Street are hoping Congress will let them take on riskier debt by directing the regulators to downplay, if not outright ignore, their recent and extensive operational failures.

Mr. Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, wrote in his 2016 annual letter to shareholders that:

``Operational risk capital should be significantly modified, if not eliminated.''

Let's think about it like this: most adult consumers in this country have a credit score. Banks use those credit scores to determine whether or not to lend to a consumer and, if so, under what terms.

These credit scores are based on a consumer's what?

A consumer's past payment history, because this information is considered one of the best indicators of a person's likelihood to default on future credit obligations.

Now, we all know that credit scores are problematic, but no one, including me, is proposing to get rid of them, because we can all agree that past payment information is a good indicator of how someone will handle credit in the future, but this bill takes that principle and throws it out the window when it comes to the 10 largest banks in this country.

Keep in mind, these same banks will continue to use a consumer's credit score for underwriting and rating of mortgages and other consumer loans, but the megabanks themselves are asking this Congress not to judge them on their past behavior, as they judge consumers, and to let them have a clean slate moving forward. If that isn't a double standard, Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what is.

Mr. Speaker, bank profits reached an all-time record high in 2016. Compensation for Wall Street CEOs has shot back up to levels last seen in 2006, and business lending is up 75 percent since 2010. All this happened while U.S. banks added more than $700 billion in capital to absorb potential losses. There is a simple reason for this: healthy banks lend.

U.S. banks also lent significantly more than their European counterparts, because our banks boosted their capital levels, while the European banks did not.

So despite Republicans' ``Chicken Little'' arguments about the dire consequences of the Dodd-Frank Act and related regulatory reforms, the data speaks for itself. Banks are making more money than ever and lending more than ever, but apparently that is not enough.

So I am here again today appealing for Congress to continue to uphold the commonsense safeguards for consumers, the broader economy, and the

megabanks. I reject this Wall Street giveaway.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this harmful legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty), a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty). She has raised a question about the analogies that the chairman made, and those analogies seem to escape ordinary logic.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Ms. Gabbard), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In addition to the concerns I have raised about this bill, I also want to mention a change to H.R. 4296 made in the Rules Committee just last night.

Because H.R. 4296 makes the 10 largest banks more likely to fail, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that there was a higher likelihood that taxpayer funds would be used to wind down a megabank. To offset these costs, Republicans have taken funds from the Federal Reserve's surplus account.

So what is the Fed's capital surplus account? Effectively, it is a rainy-day fund intended to ensure adequate capital is available to absorb possible losses. Several stakeholders have raised concerns that, by reducing the Fed's surplus account, Congress could negatively affect the Federal Reserve's independence in monetary policy decisionmaking by rendering it dependent on Treasury for recapitalization in the event that total Reserve bank capital is depleted.

Put simply, this bill not only makes the 10 largest banks more likely to fail, but it also makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will be unable to address problems in the financial system going forward.

I would like to also mention that, in a letter opposing this bill, the Center for American Progress highlighted, again, several budgetary considerations we should keep in mind as we debate this bill. And, of course, I have either mentioned or alluded to it, but it is important that we understand that the Center for American Progress is very concerned, and the CBO also projects, that H.R. 4296 will increase the deficit due to an increase in expected losses to the Federal Government stemming from an increase in the likelihood of another financial crisis.

The bill would pay for these costs by lowering the Federal Reserve System's surplus funds, once again treating the Fed like a piggy bank and shifting privately generated losses to the public.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, early in my statement, I warned that there would be someone who would come on the floor and claim that it was going to hurt community banks, small town banks; and this bill has nothing to do with community banks or small town banks.

This is about megabanks. This is about SIFIs. This is about the banks that can cause harm in the whole system. This is about those banks that we must be concerned about because of the displacement that they can cause, not only in this country, but internationally.

Mr. Speaker, I just remind you again this has nothing to do with community banks. This has nothing to do with small town banks. This is just the big banks that are significantly important banks.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let's put aside the complex terminology we often use with Financial Services legislation and call this bill what it really is: a short-sighted giveaway to Wall Street megabanks.

Approximately ten banks we are talking about, the very largest banks in our Nation, have to abide by operational risk standards under an enhanced framework. They are required to maintain this additional capital so when they continue to engage in risky behavior, like opening millions of fake accounts to drive up profits, they will not immediately become insolvent, sparking a financial crisis.

And may I just stop here for a moment and say: it is odd that, given the information that we have discovered about some of our megabanks, particularly Wells Fargo, that was involved not only in creating fake accounts, false accounts in their clients' names, but also selling them basically insurance that they did not need, I am wondering why my friends on the opposite side of the aisle are not more concerned about this operational risk that they take.

For example, when we talk about operational risk, include in that the fines, the fines that we have placed on Wells Fargo and other banks that have been caught committing fraud on its clients. It seems to me that this would be taken into consideration, and I don't think they are going to stop.

We have gone through a crisis. In 2008, we had this meltdown. We had a recession, almost a depression. We had to bail out all of these banks, yet we have Members, particularly on the opposite side of the aisle, who are doing everything that they can to go back to some of the practices that will cause us to be in the same situation we found ourselves in in 2008.

So I would just simply say that this attempt to basically say: don't look at our past, no matter how bad we have been, no matter how many fines have been placed on them, forget about that. We don't like that.

So in saying that, what they are basically saying is they are going to create more risk and they are going to put banks in the position of possibly failing.

So with that, I would just like us not to forget that our current operational risk capital standards didn't come out of nowhere. They are still recovering from the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis, which was largely caused by unsafe practices by large internationally active megabanks and inadequate regulation that ignored past misconduct and risky activities.

The crisis stripped wealth from millions of American families and destroyed the economy. Since we passed the Dodd-Frank Act and the regulators have implemented standards from the international Basel III accord, including our operational risk capital rules, we have made tremendous progress to create a better capitalized and more stable banking system, and this is bearing results.

Megabanks have experienced record-breaking profits for the past several years. Now they expect us to believe that these commonsense rules that take into account their previous behavior was keeping them from providing more affordable credit to hardworking consumers in search of the American Dream?

As I mentioned earlier, a bank can still make loans to credit-worthy consumers while funding those loans with capital instead of debt.

Operational capital is not cash locked away at night, but, rather, it is the value of a bank's assets minus its liabilities or debts. A well- capitalized bank that has adequate sources of funding can accommodate losses without reducing its lending. In fact, it would be able to lend in good times and in bad.

We should direct the regulators overseeing megabanks like Wells Fargo with its years of numerous consumer abuses and JPMorgan Chase with its London Whale trading scandal not to ignore these past failures and put our constituents at risk.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are rushing through deregulatory measures to help their friends on Wall Street. But Congress must not forget that it was hardworking consumers across the country who paid dearly for Wall Street's faults in the last financial crisis. So I would urge Members to vote ``no'' on this bill.

I am very pleased that while my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle keep talking about this being a bipartisan bill and they mention Mr. Meeks'

name from New York, et cetera, we have the support of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus in opposition to this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am opposed to the bill in its current form.

Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended.

We have talked at length today about how H.R. 4296 is a bill for Wall Street megabanks, and I deeply disagree with the bill's approach. So I offer this motion to recommit not in a manner that sends the bill to the committee and kills the bill, but, rather, to attempt to improve the bill before the House votes on final passage of the measure.

Let's discuss the elephant in the room. We all know megabanks have been given a free ride in Washington for far too long. During the savings and loan crisis, the government had no problem throwing bankers in jail for breaking the law. Over 1,000 bank executives were prosecuted. But now megabanks just get a fine, a slap on the wrist, for harming consumers.

Since 2010, megabanks have racked up over $160 billion worth of fines, yet they keep breaking the law. We have talked about Wells Fargo's growing list of illegal actions that have harmed millions of consumers. Sure they have been fined, but these fines are just the cost of doing business. This soft enforcement approach is just increasing their operational risk and losses, which, at the end of the day, will impact not only all of their customers, but the broader economy as well.

I hope Republicans and Democrats can all agree that any megabank that engages in a pattern or practice of unsafe or unsound banking practices and other egregious violations that has resulted in profound consumer harm in the last 10 years is not entitled to any benefit of regulatory relief provided under this bill.

So my amendment excludes a megabank like Wells Fargo that has fraudulently opened millions of accounts without their customers' consent, enrolled consumers in life insurance policies without their consent, and forced nearly 1 million Americans to purchase automobile insurance that they didn't even need.

Since 2016, I have been calling for Wells Fargo to face real penalties. Last year, I introduced H.R. 3937, the Megabank Accountability and Consequences Act, to compel the Federal bank regulators to fully utilize existing authorities to stop these megabanks from repeatedly flouting the law and harming millions of consumers.

So I was glad to see Janet Yellen on her last day at the Federal Reserve take bold action to cap the bank's size until it cleans up its act. I am talking about Wells Fargo. This is what Janet Yellen did on her last day at the Federal Reserve.

But we must do more to send a strong message to all megabanks that there will be real consequences for their bad actions that mislead, abuse, or deceive its customers.

H.R. 4296, in its current form, would send the opposite message to recidivist megabanks. They should not reap the profit of easier operational capital requirements while their operational breakdowns are only increasing.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to adopt this motion to recommit so that we do not reward a recidivist megabank like Wells Fargo for repeated operational failures that ripped off millions of consumers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 3299, or the so- called Protecting Consumers' Access to Credit Act of 2017. There is a good reason over 200 civil rights, consumer, faith-based, housing, labor, and veterans advocacy organizations oppose this bill. The type of credit that this bill helps consumers access is the kind that makes it easier for vulnerable consumers to sink into insurmountable debt like payday and other high-cost loans.

H.R. 3299 expands the ability of nonbanks to preempt State-level consumer protections by stating that the interest rate on any loan originated by a national bank that is subsequently transferred to a third party, no matter how quickly after it is originated, is enforceable, which incentivizes riskier and predatory lending. H.R. 3299 advances a dangerous precedent by allowing third parties that purchase loans from national banks to collect on interest rates that would otherwise be illegal because they exceed State caps.

Now, this bill is an attempt to overturn a court decision related to the legal concept of ``valid when made'' from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Madden v. Midland Funding, LLC. In that case, the court held that, when loans are transferred from banks to nonbank third parties, they must maintain the same terms, rates, and conditions as required by the State where the originating bank is chartered.

Despite claims by proponents of the bill, legal experts have explained in testimony that ``the valid-when-made doctrine is a modern invention, not a cornerstone of U.S. banking law.''

The Madden decision is only the rule of law in the States under the Second Circuit, which are Connecticut, New York, and Vermont. Some industry advocates, particularly marketplace lender fintechs, have argued the ruling and confusion about valid when made caused such great market ambiguity that it has resulted in reduced lending to needy borrowers in those States, but those claims have not been substantiated.

The only purported evidence we have on the effect of the Madden rule is a single, unpublished study that cannot even be peer-reviewed because it relies on private data from a single, unidentified marketplace lender, and the authors of that study have not endorsed this bill. In addition, 20 State attorneys general, including the attorneys general for all three States under the Second Circuit, oppose this legislative change.

But do you know what? Predatory lenders are worried about the Madden case for a different reason.

Elevate, an online payday lender, is afraid that they won't be able to continue making predatory loans if the Madden decision stays in place. In their public filings with the SEC, Elevate said:

To the extent that the holdings in Madden were broadened to

cover circumstances applicable to Elevate's business or if

other litigation on related theories were brought against us

and were successful, we could become subject to State usury

limits and State licensing laws in addition to the State

consumer protection laws to which we are already subject. In

a greater number of States, loans in such States could be

deemed void and unenforceable, and we would be subject to

substantial penalties in connection with such loans.

Mr. Speaker, I do not doubt the sincerity of the good actors that may be trying to navigate a difficulty the Madden ruling potentially caused, but this is not just about those businesses, because H.R. 3299 would go much further to allow other third parties, including payday lenders, to evade or outright disregard State-level laws and collect debt from borrowers at unreasonably high rates of interest if they purchase loans from a national bank. These arrangements are called rent-a-bank or rent-a-charter agreements, and they allow payday lenders to use banks as a front for predatory behavior and the evasion of State interest rate caps.

Payday loans drain wealth from low-income consumers, particularly those in communities of color, and payday loans trap their borrowers into a cycle of debt that it takes years to climb out of with high interest rates that are often in excess of 300 percent.

So let's be clear. Instead of simply overturning the Madden decision, H.R. 3299 would go far beyond that and codify an expanded preemption power without any proof that it will benefit consumers. In fact, all we do know is that the bill will make it easier for bad actors to evade safeguards that States have put in place to protect borrowers.

We cannot advance a bill that will allow nonbanks like payday lenders to ignore State interest rate caps and make high-rate loans. While Congress has preempted some State laws for national banks, it did not authorize national banks to extend the privilege to whatever entities they so choose.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna), vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Both of the gentlemen, Mr. McHenry and Mr. Rothfus, who are advancing this legislation come from States that don't support it.

Mr. McHenry, North Carolina has banned payday lending. Mr. Rothfus, Pennsylvania has banned payday lending. And here you have a bill that would allow payday lenders to buy up debt from national banks and, basically, charge consumers whatever they would like to charge them. They would get around the ban of your own States. Do you really want to do this?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to remind Mr. Pittenger that his State, North Carolina, again, along with Mr. McHenry, attorneys general have opposed this bill. They do not like this bill, and I just want to remind them that they don't have the support of their States in doing so.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney), the ranking member of the Capital Markets, Securities, and Investments Subcommittee on the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, you have heard those of us who are opposed to this legislation repeat over and over again that this is all about predatory lending; that this bill would open the gates wide to the kind of abuses that we have been fighting so hard against.

Mrs. MALONEY asked the questions: Why do you want to do this to your constituents? Why do you want to do this to the very consumers that we are supposed to be protecting?

I have raised a question to those who come from States where the attorneys general oppose this legislation. The gentlemen from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, who are here in support of this bill, they are ignoring the fact that their State attorneys general are saying that this bill is a bad bill.

Of course, if H.R. 3299 was really about expanding access to underserved populations, as the proponents claim, then they may be surprised to learn that the Nation's leading civil and consumer groups are all opposed to this legislation because it will harm consumers, not help them.

According to a news article from last November, there is a reason the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Consumer Law Center, the Consumer Federation of America, and dozens of churches, women's groups, and antipoverty organizations from around the country have denounced the bill.

In September, those groups wrote a joint letter to Congress warning that H.R. 3299 ``wipes away the strongest available tool against predatory lending practices'' and ``will open the floodgates to a wide range of predatory actors to make loans at 300 percent annual interest or higher.''

The article goes on to say: ``But you don't have to take the NAACP's word for it, just take a look at the companies who are lobbying in favor of H.R. 3299.''

Well, they aren't many, as it is a complicated and obscure issue. But one of them, according to a Federal lobbying disclosure form, is a firm called CNU Online Holdings, LLC. Most customers of CNU Online Holdings don't even realize they use it. They are more familiar with CNU's parent company, payday lending giant Enova Financial; or its flagship brand, CashNetUSA.

The bottom line is that this bill is not helping our consumers, but, rather, lining the pockets of predatory lenders who are looking for any way around State interest rate caps and consumer protections.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this is odd. Here, we have another Member of Congress, whose State attorney general opposes the bill, and who has banned payday lending.

So, here, Mr. Emmer is joining with Mr. McHenry and Mr. Pittenger, whose State opposes the bill, North Carolina. Again, the two of them are in opposition to their own State's attorney general. And now we have Mr. Rothfus from Pennsylvania and all of these speakers on the opposite side of the aisle who are coming here to support a bill that will open up the opportunity for payday lenders to basically rent a bank and put these payday loans out there at exorbitant amounts.

Mr. Speaker, again, this is rather odd to see so many Members representing, supposedly, their constituents who come from States where payday lending has been banned and their attorneys general oppose this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think my friend on the opposite side of the aisle, the chairman, is right. I must make sure that I am correct in the way that I identify my colleagues, who they are and what States they come from.

So I would like to repeat: Mr. McHenry is from North Carolina. Mr. Pittenger is from North Carolina. The attorney general from that State opposes this bill, and this State has banned payday lending.

Also let me just mention that Mr. Rothfus from Pennsylvania is another one who is opposed by his attorney general. His attorney general is opposed to this bill, is opposed to his representation, and Pennsylvania has banned payday lending.

Of course, we were joined by Mr. Emmer, who is from Minnesota. Minnesota is in the same position as North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The attorney general of Minnesota opposes this bill, and Minnesota bans payday lending.

So let's be clear. We want to make sure that everybody understands who these Members are who are coming here in opposition to their attorneys general, in opposition to their State. These are Representatives from States that oppose this bill. These are Representatives from States who have banned payday lending.

So I want to be sure that I agree with my chairman. We should let everyone know who they are. We should pronounce their names correctly. We should be sure that all of their constituents understand who their Representatives are and what they are doing here today on this bill that will help to explode predatory lending.

This is the rent-a-bank bill that would allow payday lenders to buy up debt from national banks and be able to charge whatever they would like, 300 percent and more, to the unsuspecting consumers.

So I thank the chairman for helping me to make that clear.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Chairman Hensarling has named the Members on my side of the aisle, the Democrats who support this bill. None of them are on the floor at this time. None of them came here to defend the position that they took. Some of them are reconsidering the vote that they took, and so I don't want him to try and wrap this bill around the fact that there were some Democrats who supported it.

This is a Republican bill. This is a bill by the opposite side of the aisle that supports payday lending and the ability for payday lenders to continue to exploit their consumers in a new and different way. They simply allow them to buy up this debt from the national banks to be able to basically overcome usury laws.

So while he would like everyone to believe there is all of this great Democratic support and he keeps saying over and over again how bipartisan this bill is, none of them are on the floor at this time. None of them came here to defend their position. None of them have said, ``I know that I am absolutely correct.'' As a matter of fact, some of them are raising questions about whether or not they should have voted for the bill, understanding it in one particular way, and some now understanding what it really does.

So I thank the gentleman for his position, and I thank him for being a strong advocate for his position. I thank him for at least stepping up to the plate to say, in essence, he believes that he is doing the right thing, despite the fact that he has got Members on that side of the aisle who are going against their own States' attorneys general.

But let us not believe that this is some great Democratic bill. It is not.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

There was a reference to Senator Warner, and he said that the Madden fix bill must address the payday lender loophole. I alluded to some of this kind of thinking about those who may have supported the bill without really giving a lot of thought to this loophole, but I just want you to know that even the author of the bill, Senator Warner, is saying that the Madden fix bill must address payday lender loopholes.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3299 is ultimately a bill that would make it easier for bad actors to get around interest rate caps that States have put into place to protect borrowers from predator payday pit traps. Let's be clear: the availability of affordable credit is very important in every community, and we should work together in ways to make sure that underserved communities have fair access to credit and banking services.

But measures like H.R. 3299 do not productively advance that goal. In fact, the bill would do the opposite. It would open the door for nonbanks to ignore States' strong protections and make loans with high interest rates. The bill would usher in a wave of harmful, high-cost payday loans in States where such loans were previously disallowed.

Let's not forget that last month Mick Mulvaney, who President Trump illegally appointed to serve as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, directed the Consumer Bureau to reconsider its sensible and much-needed rule on payday vehicle title and certain high-cost installment loans. That rule, put in place under the leadership of Richard Cordray, would require payday lenders to ensure that consumers can actually afford to pay off their loans.

Essentially, Donald Trump and Mick Mulvaney are helping out payday lenders by undermining the Consumer Bureau's rule as well as rolling back and undermining many of the other critical protections put in place by Democrats in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

On top of his pull to reconsider the payday rule, Mulvaney has also drawn a Consumer Bureau lawsuit against a group of payday lenders who allegedly failed to disclose the true cost of loans which had interest rates as high as 950 percent a year.

Mr. Speaker, Congress should be standing up for and enhancing protections for consumers, not legislating to make it easier for hardworking Americans to be drawn into payday debt traps.

H.R. 3299 is widely opposed by over 200 consumer and civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, the National Consumer Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and many others.

And so I think it is clear what we are advocating on this side of the aisle. We are simply saying that we should not create this loophole, that we should understand the struggle that many of us have been in to try and keep payday lenders from going into the most vulnerable neighborhoods, targeting the most vulnerable people, taking advantage of folks who have no place to turn and who need a few dollars until payday, taking advantage of them and trapping them into these loans and creating all of this debt for them.

This would just go a long way to continue that kind of madness, and so I would urge Members to vote ``no'' on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.