Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment that stops the Justice Department from using one of the most dangerous and illogical legal theories of all times: the theory of disparate impact.

In short, disparate impact liability allows the government to allege discrimination on the basis of race or other factors based solely on the statistical analysis that finds disproportionate results among different groups of people.

In recent years, the Justice Department has increasingly used this dubious theory in lawsuits against mortgage lenders, insurers, and landlords, and forced these companies to pay multimillion dollar settlements.

What is wrong with this, one might ask? Well, under disparate impact, one could never intentionally discriminate in any way, and even then have strong antidiscriminatory policies in place, and still be found to have discriminated.

If, for example, a mortgage lender uses a completely objective standard to assess the credit risk, such as the debt-to-income ratio, they can still be found to have discriminated if the data show different loan approval rates for different groups of consumers.

Some of these statistical differences and outcomes may actually be due to discrimination, but others may not be. It is impossible to tell which is which from the statistics alone. Under disparate impact it doesn't matter though. All statistical differences are considered by themselves discrimination.

To be clear, none of us have a tolerance for intentional discrimination. If there is intentional discrimination, we must prosecute it to the fullest extent of the law. The Justice Department's use of disparate impact, however, tries to fight one injustice with another.

On a more practical level, disparate impact will make it difficult, if not impossible, for lenders to make rational economic decisions about risk. Lenders will feel the pressure to weaken their current standards to keep their lending statistics in line with whatever the Justice Department bureaucrats consider nondiscriminatory.

We have seen what this discriminatory and damaging risky lending can do to our economy. It is truly reckless for our government to be encouraging those dangerous and short-sighted practices to continue.

Ironically, disparate impact forces lenders, insurers, and landlords to constantly take race, ethnicity, gender, and other factors into account or risk running afoul of the Justice Department.

You and I both know, Mr. Chairman, that even an accusation of discrimination could have a devastating impact on a small business.

I quote Roger Clegg, who is the president and general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity. He said:

The disparate impact standard for antidiscrimination law

pushes people to do one of two things: Get rid of legitimate

selection criteria, or use a racial double standard to ensure

that the numbers come out right.

On balance, Mr. Chairman, disparate impact will make it more difficult and expensive for families to buy a home, and will result in more discrimination not less.

For these reasons, both philosophical and practical, I ask my colleagues to reject this misguided theory by supporting my amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Will the gentleman yield?

You just said something. You said that the Justice Department will not go after them if a whole set of policies result in discriminations.

Mr. Chairman, I think what America wants is to only be able to bring lawsuits against discrimination when there was, in fact, intentional discrimination, not just because, at the end result from some statistics, some may believe that there was discrimination. If there was intentional discrimination, this amendment does not do anything that would prevent the Justice Department from proceeding.

I would like to enter into the Record support for legislation from a number of organizations, including the Consumer Mortgage Coalition, Credit Union National Association, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, and also NAMIC, PCI, and American Insurance Association, which in part states:

All 50 States have a strong and comprehensive

antidiscrimination regulatory regime, including definitions

of unacceptable conduct and full panoply of enforcement tools

that includes rate approval, license revocation, and fines.

There is no evidence that these regimes are insufficient.

Furthermore, they state:

Under the disparate impact theory, even when a lender takes

every step to prevent discrimination and treats all consumers

fairly and equally, a neutral policy can serve as a basis for

very serious and harmful results.

And ``could increase the cost and undermine the availability of credit throughout the economy.''

American Bankers Association, American Financial Services

Association, Consumer Mortgage Coalition, Credit Union

National Association, Independent Community Bankers of

America, Mortgage Bankers Association, National

Association of Federal Credit Unions

May 29, 2014.

Dear Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: The

undersigned organizations support Representative Garrett's

amendment to H.R. 4660, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and

Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2015. The

amendment would prohibit any funds made available by the Act

from being used for litigation in which the Department of

Justice (DOJ) seeks to prove illegal discrimination based on

the ``disparate impact'' theory.

All of our organizations and their member companies view

illegal discrimination in housing and lending as morally,

ethically, and legally abhorrent and do not tolerate it in

any size, shape or form. They are committed to providing

financial services to American consumers in full compliance

with all lending laws.

Recently, the Department of Justice, along with the

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), entered into a

$98 million settlement with Ally Financial and Ally Bank over

allegations that it discriminated against minority borrowers

in its indirect auto lending program. The order represents

the federal government's largest auto loan discrimination

settlement in history. The CFPB and DOJ based their

allegations solely on a disparate impact theory of

discrimination. They do not allege that Ally intentionally

discriminated against any consumers. This settlement was only

a part of a larger joint effort between the CFPB and DOJ to

address disparate impact in the auto lending market.

Disparate impact claims also have been brought under the

Fair Housing Act pursuant to rules issued by the Department

of Housing and Urban Development. This is notwithstanding

that the basis for such claims under the Act is in

considerable dispute.

Under the disparate impact theory, even when a lender takes

every step to prevent

discrimination and treats all consumers fairly and equally, a

neutral policy can serve as a basis for very serious and

harmful claims in the absence of intentional discrimination.

Smaller lenders, in particular, will find it difficult to

manage this type of litigation risk. Left unchecked,

disparate impact enforcement could increase the cost and

undermine the availability of credit throughout the economy.

We ask the Members of the House of Representatives to vote

in favor of Representative Garrett's amendment.

National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies,

Property Casualty Insurers Association of America,

American Insurance Association

May 29, 2014.

Hon. John Boehner,

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Hon. Nancy Pelosi,

Minority Leader, Washington, DC.

Dear Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Pelosi: The

undersigned insurance trade organizations strongly support

Rep. Scott Garrett's amendment to H.R. 4660 to prevent the

Department of Justice (DOJ) from using funds to litigate in

order to prove illegal discrimination based on the

``disparate impact'' theory. In particular, we are concerned

about the use of the ``disparate impact'' theory in relation

to a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule (24 C.F.R.

100.500) issued on February 15, 2013. The new rule would

allow HUD and DOJ to hold insurers liable for discrimination

when a housing-related practice has a discriminatory effect

based on ``disparate impact'' theory.

We individually and collectively abhor any unfair

discrimination in any aspect of insurance. However,

application of the rule to the provision and pricing of

homeowners insurance as HUD intends is impractical and

contrary to existing State and Federal law. All 50 States

have a strong and comprehensive anti-discrimination

regulatory regime, including definitions of unacceptable

conduct and a full panoply of enforcement tools that includes

rate approval, license revocation, and fines. There is no

evidence that these regimes have been insufficient.

The rule could be used to challenge common and regulator-

approved factors used for risk-based pricing--including an

applicant's claims history, construction materials, the

presence or absence of a security system, and distance from a

firehouse--if they were found to result in a statistical

disparity for a class defined by race, ethnicity, or gender.

However, accurate risk classification is essential to the

business of insurance and treating similar risk profiles in a

similar manner is a form of reasonable and fair underwriting

that is at the very heart of the business of insurance. The

rule ignores this and under it, an insurance company acting

in full compliance with a State rating law standard could see

itself challenged under the ``disparate impact'' theory.

Accordingly, the rule is impractical and contrary to

existing law. Therefore, we support passage of Mr. Garrett's

amendment to H.R. 4660 to prevent DOJ from funding litigation

to prove illegal discrimination based on the ``disparate

impact'' theory.

Sincerely,

American Insurance Association, National Association of

Mutual Insurance Companies, Property Casualty Insurers

Association of America.

In the end, Mr. Speaker, what we are intending to do here is to allow for the Justice Department to proceed when there is evidence of intentional discrimination. But when there is no evidence whatsoever, when it is purely on statistics, then it should not proceed under that theory of law.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I submit a clarification of my vote during consideration of H.R. 4435, the Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015. I mistakenly voted ``no'' on rollcall Vote 231, the McKinley of West Virginia Amendment No. 1. I intended to vote ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4488) to make technical corrections to two bills enabling the presentation of congressional gold medals, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous material for the Record on H.R. 4488, which is currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4488, the Gold Medal Technical Corrections Act of 2014, introduced by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) and Ms. Brown of Florida.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation seeks to make minor technical corrections to allow the actual awarding of two Congressional Gold Medals authorized in previous Congresses. The first medal was awarded to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King. The other medal was awarded to the pioneering Montford Point Marines of World War II.

For different reasons, there are now no statutorily designated recipients of the medals. As has often happened in the past with such medals, they will be given to the Smithsonian Institution, where they will be available for display, research, or loan, as appropriate, to sites significant to their honorees.

Importantly, in the case of both these medals, the sense of Congress is expressed that one place that would be very appropriate to display either or both of these medals is at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, now under construction literally just down the street.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. It is a bipartisan bill. I ask for its immediate passage.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

At this point, we have no other speakers. I, again, would just like to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for joining us with the sponsoring of this legislation; Mr. Lewis, not only for legislation that is on the floor today, but for your historic work on behalf of civil rights prior to coming to Congress as well.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 627) to provide for the issuance of coins to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the National Park Service, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, again, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks, and also to submit extraneous materials for the Record on this bill, H.R. 627, as amended, and currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 627, the National Park Service 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act, introduced by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

Mr. Speaker, this legislation seeks to authorize the minting and sale in 2016 of gold, silver, and clad commemorative coins marking the centenary of the forming of the National Park Service, the great stewards of American history and the American landscape so important to all of us.

The idea of federally recognizing and preserving certain sites began in the late 19th century with the official establishment of a select group of national parks, including Yellowstone, Sequoia National Park in California, and Yosemite as well.

When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, he continued this effort, speaking out on the importance of preserving the habitats of American wildlife and signing the Antiquities Act of 1906. That act allowed the President to ``declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and pre-historic structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.''

About a decade later, in 1916, the National Park Service was created to place all of the sites under the care of a single independent agency.

Fast forward to today, now, the Park Service manages nearly 400 sites totaling 84 million acres. These parks cover all corners of our Nation, and almost every American State and territory is home to at least one.

People from around the globe now are attracted to our national sites because of both their beauty and also their grandeur. Every year, our parks hosts--note this--280 million visitors.

The legislation before us today has 307 cosponsors, and a companion Senate bill has 73.

The coins will be minted and sold at no cost to the taxpayer. No proceeds from the sale may be used to acquire new lands.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill, honoring a great part of the Federal Government that maintains some of the most spectacular parts of American landscape and history, and I ask for its immediate passage.

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

Mr. Speaker, at this time, we are joined by the original sponsor of the legislation. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4167) to amend section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, known as the Volcker Rule, to exclude certain debt securities of collateralized loan obligations from the prohibition against acquiring or retaining an ownership interest in a hedge fund or private equity fund, as amended.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials to the Record on H.R. 4167, as amended, currently under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4167, which is the Restoring Proven Financing for American Employers Act. It was introduced by the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr), who we will be hearing from shortly. And I would also like to thank my good friend from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the ranking member of the Capital Markets Subcommittee, for her bipartisan and commonsense work on this important issue as well.

Today we have the opportunity to correct, in a strong, bipartisan way, an egregious example of regulatory overreach. For no reason that has been coherently stated by anyone, the banking regulators responsible for implementing the Volcker Rule have included provisions in their final rule that will literally cripple the market for collateralized loan obligations, also called CLOs.

See, at the stroke of a pen, the banking regulators are going to wreak havoc on one of the largest and most important sources of financing for literally hundreds of growing companies across this country. If the CLO provisions in the Volcker Rule go forward as planned, there will be a heavy price to pay in failed companies and also lost jobs.

So why is the government doing this? Did CLOs do anything to cause the financial crisis? No, they did not. Are CLOs a menace to the stability of our financial system? No, again. Is the small proportion of securities included in some CLO structures a national crisis that requires such a heavy hand by the Federal Government? Of course not.

Thankfully, the bill we have today, introduced by my friend from Kentucky (Mr. Barr), fixes this problem of the banking regulators' own making. First, it prevents a disastrous fire sale of suddenly impermissible legacy CLOs. Second, it narrows the Volcker rule's absurdly broad definition of an ``ownership interest'' in a CLO.

Last month, the Financial Services Committee passed this bill on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, with all but three members of the committee voting in favor of it. The Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association have all voiced their support as well.

I am sorry, though, that it has come to this. You know, time and time again the committee has admonished the banking regulators that the CLO provisions of Volcker were a threat to the economy and to the financial stability that they are supposed to be protecting. Time and again, however, the unwieldy banking regulators chose to do nothing. If they had corrected this problem as we have been urging them to do and which they could do, we would not be here wasting valuable legislative time saving the CLO market from our own public servants.

Now, some have suggested that the agencies don't have the legal authority to fix the problems. It is interesting that Federal agencies always seem to have plenty of authority when it comes to doing something, but when they need to fix something that they messed up, well, suddenly they have no authority.

Perhaps the real problem is the fact that we have so many different banking regulatory agencies in the first place. If coordinating these agencies to avoid a regulatory train wreck is too difficult, then maybe we need fewer agencies.

I have spoken before about the proliferation of government regulators with authority over our financial markets. More regulators mean more wasteful duplication of functions, more regulatory confusion, more empire building, more bureaucratic rivalry, less accountability, and less problem solving.

An ever increasing number of agencies with ever increasing authority only makes our financial system more unsustainable and more arbitrary and more unstable, and it makes it all the more likely that the heavy- handed government will fall suddenly on some unlucky corner of the economy.

So it is my hope that this body can come together now and support this bipartisan piece of legislation so that we can ensure that the market for collateralized loan obligations, CLOs, is not carelessly and needlessly destroyed. While they may not have a high profile, CLOs provide a valuable function that our recovering economy cannot do without, and I urge my colleagues for that reason to support H.R. 4167.

And at this time, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, we are now joined by the sponsor of the bill, the gentleman from Kentucky, who, as was indicated, worked in a bipartisan manner to get it out of committee, here on the floor. And I assume we are going to see a strong bipartisan vote for it on the floor as well.

At this time, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

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

I just want to take a moment to respond as well to the gentleman from Massachusetts. He indicated that he is probably not going to convince anyone who is supporting the bill. I presume I am probably not going to convince him either, as I look over there, because he is now off the floor; but if he is back in his office and tuning us in, let me just make some points where he might be convinced.

He spoke about the fire sale that will not occur now under the proposed Volcker Rule. Well, yes, it still will occur, just because you are not saying that the sale has to occur this afternoon, but it is going to occur at a set point in time, either 6 months from now, a year from now, or as they are proposing, 2 years from now. In either case, when you set a date certain for a sale, then everyone else out there knows that this is the day that they might as well wait for; and eventually, they will have to sell, and at that point in time, they will engage in a fire sale.

In other words, by setting a date when you have to sell all of your assets or whatever you have, you are basically pushing the price down in that market.

Secondly, with regard to sales up, I guess the gentleman from Kentucky already raised that point. Sales were going down until Congress came together in a unique experience for Congress, which was a bipartisan effort, and once the rest of Main Street and Wall Street saw that Congress can actually do things together and work together in a bipartisan manner, they did what the rest of Americans will do and said: good thing. They said: let's get that market going back up again.

As the gentleman from Kentucky pointed out, that is exactly what occurred.

Thirdly, the gentleman from Massachusetts admitted that the CLO market was not the cause or any cause of the crisis that we had back in 2008, and I have not heard any testimony from anyone on any panel from either end of the spectrum that the CLOs would be a basis for the next crisis that inevitably will come.

Next, the gentleman from Massachusetts raised the point that something like 70 percent of all the CLOs out there are captured by something like three large banks or three financial institutions and made it sound as though the smaller and midsized banks are not really playing here.

Then you had to listen to the next thing that he said. He said that most of those CLOs held by those would already be protected by the current Volcker proposal out of the administration.

Well, that tells you right there that the legislation from the gentleman from Kentucky is not addressing or not trying to solve a problem for the three large banks. The legislation he is trying to put forward in a bipartisan manner is, in fact, doing just as he explained for the smaller banks, for the midsized banks, those are the ones that we are concerned about; and we want to make sure that they are not hurt through fire sales or further restrictions on them.

Finally, last--but maybe not least--is the fact that this bill will not end too big to fail. Well, we know that Dodd-Frank, unfortunately, did not end too big to fail.

Dodd-Frank did a number of things, but it did not end too big to fail, and the way to solve that is not by nitpicking around the edges on areas such as this that did not cause the crisis in the first place.

In fact, the authors and the proponents of Dodd-Frank understood that when they passed Dodd-Frank--because, look, what is the language in

Dodd-Frank when it comes to the Volcker Rule and the CLO matter that is before us today? Did they want to have this included in the rule that Volcker would eventually come out with? The answer is no.

The language specifically in 619 of Dodd-Frank--voted in favor of, by the way, by the gentleman from Massachusetts--says:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit or

restrict the ability of a banking entity or nonbank financial

company supervised by the Federal Reserve Board to sell or

secure type loans in a manner otherwise permitted by law.

What does that sentence mean? That means that the sponsors of--and those like the gentleman from Massachusetts who supported Dodd-Frank-- specifically put into the Dodd-Frank law the direction to the Fed and the other regulators that they should not be doing what they are doing right now. They should not be putting, as it says, limitations on this type of instrument.

So for all of those reasons, if the gentleman from Massachusetts is still watching what we are doing on the floor, perhaps we have convinced him that he should join with the majority on both sides of the House and not be part of the three or so who remain opposed to this and support the legislation, H.R. 4167.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on this bill, which is H.R. 1872, which is the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 539, I call up the bill (H.R. 1872) to amend the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to increase transparency in Federal budgeting, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the chairman of the Budget Committee, Chairman Paul Ryan, and the Budget Committee staff as well for their hard work on H.R. 1872, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act.

As many have talked about before, our budget process in this country is broken. Simply put, we need to make the budget process more transparent. So the bill before the House today, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, is, as we like to say, a commonsense attempt to introduce more sunshine and common sense into our budget process. So what would this legislation do?

Most importantly, the bill will require that the Federal Government apply something called fair value accounting. Now, that is the same credit accounting standards as the private sector uses when making or guaranteeing loans. So fair value accounting provides a more robust or more complete picture of the cost to the taxpayer of government loan programs or government lending programs. So fair value accounting accomplishes this how? By accounting for an additional market-risk premium.

Also, the bill recognizes the budgetary impact of government- sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So this bill would then bring these wards of the taxpayer from out of the shadows and onto the budget.

So why exactly do we need this specific piece of legislation here today? Well, without getting into the weeds too much, the simplest explanation is that there is no such thing in this country or in the world as a free lunch when it comes to a government program. The costs are always borne by someone, and in this case, it is borne by the American people.

The facts indicate that not only is government costly, but also government costs more than we all initially expected. So the burden of government rarely comes in under budget. Nowhere does this ring truer than the Federal Housing Administration program, also called FHA, and their mortgage insurance. See, it defies common sense FHA, according to administration's Federal accounting rules, that they actually make money, they say, for the government.

How do they do so? Well, it is only through the alchemy of government accounting can you transform a mortgage portfolio of figurative lead into gold and still remain true to the law.

So this free money comes courtesy of what? It comes courtesy of the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990. This is the Federal accounting program and the standard that we operate today.

Under FCRA's cooked accounting rules, the cost of Federal mortgage insurance is determined on the basis of a subsidy cost, including the risk that the borrowers default on a mortgage; and by using the Treasury rate, it does not account for market risk or overall systemic risk.

So, what does that mean? Unlike fair value accounting, which appropriately incorporates a premium for market risk, the current law fails to reflect the true cost to the American taxpayer of these FHA mortgage-backed insurance.

Let me give you an example. In the 2011 report, the nonpartisan CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, compared the cost of the current system of FHA of a single-family mortgage insurance on both the current law and what we have here, which is fair value basis.

What did CBO find? Well, CBO estimated that, under the current accounting, FHA would actually raise--raise--$4.4 billion for the government in 2012. Sounds pretty good. But if you actually dug into the numbers and use fair value basis--which, as I said before, is what the private sector would be forced to do--with an appropriate accounting of market risk--and of course, market risk is there--then what did CBO find? CBO then estimated that FHA would not gain $4.4 billion, but that FHA would actually lose $3.5 billion over the exact same period.

Why is this? Because CBO believes that fair value provides a fuller picture of a program's budgetary impact. So it now employs fair value basis accounting as a standard procedure for Federal loan programs and Federal loan guarantee programs such as FHA.

However, where is the problem? The problem is the Obama administration has strongly resisted the move to fair value accounting, and instead, they cling to the current program instead.

Let me give you another example. In 2010, President Obama effectively nationalized the Federal student lending program. The President then immediately spent the savings, if you will--remember, I talked about some of these before--on his signature health care law.

What is the problem? The problem is that there is a growing gap now between how much money was borrowed and backed by the U.S. taxpayer-- that means you and I--and how much money is actually being repaid by the graduates.

Let me give you some numbers. Based on the Department of Education data, there is a $99 billion gap between what has been borrowed and what has been paid back since only 2010. Remember, the President said these loans would actually make money for the Federal Government. Instead, the actual numbers are coming in that it is costing a $99 billion gap.

So, the bill before us today, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act, fixes these shortcomings by requiring that market risk to be explicitly included in estimates of Federal credit programs. What will that do? That will bring Federal budget practice in line with what has long been standard practice in the private sector.

Specifically, it requires the executive branch and Congress to use fair value accounting in calculating the cost of Federal credit programs that consider not only the borrowing cost of the Federal Government, but also the cost of the market risk of the Federal Government in incurring or issuing any of these loans or loan guarantee programs.

And so, with mounting debt and a lackluster job growth, it is time to force the government to play by the same economic rules as every single American family and business has to. It is not fair to keep putting the American taxpayer on the hook.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and if I can catch him before he leaves, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, I appreciate all of your comments. I won't touch on all of them, but I will touch on one or two.

In a sign of bipartisanship, I would like to extend to you, not knowing where this bill may end up in the future of things here in the House and the Senate, but extend to you an invitation to cosponsor with me what you said twice during your remarks that you seemed to be on the same page as I am and as I have been for a long time with regard to the GSEs and have fair value accounting applied to them and on budget.

I would extend that invitation to you.

I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Right.

So, as I say, my staff will talk to your staff on that, and thank you for your other comments.

Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record a letter dated January 30 from the American Action Forum, which is an organization run by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin--and I won't go into detail--but he basically wrote to express his complete support of H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2014, for the

very reasons that we have set forth here already.

Mr. Speaker, I am not seeing any other speakers at this time. I do see there are several other speakers on the other side, so I reserve the balance of my time.

American Action Forum,

January 30, 2012.

Hon. Paul Ryan,

Longworth House Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Ryan: I am writing to express my support for

H.R. 3581, ``The Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of

2011,'' in particular those provisions that would incorporate

fair value accounting (FVA) into the federal budget process.

As you are well aware, a core objective in federal budgeting

is to accurately display the scale and timing of the

expenditure of taxpayer resources. Since sovereign tax and

borrowing powers should always be used judiciously, there is

a premium on doing so as accurately as possible.

In some cases this is straightforward. Consider, for

example, a discretionary appropriation. The scale of the

overall commitment is clear and in some cases it is

straightforward to budget the timing of the ultimate outlays

as well. Federal credit programs, however, present particular

difficulties. The timing of budgetary cash flows differs

dramatically between direct loans and federal loan

guarantees--even in cases when the ultimate economic impact

is identical. The Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (FCRA)

took an important step forward by equalizing the timing of

their budgetary treatment. Direct loans and loan guarantees

are both recorded in the budget during the year in which the

commitment is incurred, regardless of the duration and timing

of the federal assistance.

This was an important step in the right direction. However,

estimating the scale of required taxpayer resources remains

problematic. In particular, the ability of loan recipients to

make timely and complete repayments will be influenced by

future individual, household, and economy-wide economic

conditions. In the same way, the obligation of the federal

government to undertake guarantee payments will be driven by

similar forces.

While such future individual and economic conditions are

uncertain, reliable techniques exist to estimate the likely

size of the taxpayer obligation. Unfortunately, FCRA

needlessly restricts the analyses to credit risk--the

probability of failure to fully repay--while ignoring the

fact that the timing of those failures matters enormously. As

the past few years have starkly reminded every American, the

need to tax, borrow and otherwise deprive the private sector

of another dollar has far greater implications during the

depths of economic distress than during periods of robust

economic growth. Adoption of FVA would rectify this oversight

I recognize that significant reform to budget procedures

should not be undertaken lightly. However, my views are

informed by the fact that during my tenure as director, the

Congressional Budget Office undertook a number of studies of

the implications of accounting fully for economic risks in

the budgetary treatment of financial commitments like credit

programs. In example after example (pension guarantees;

deposit insurance; flood insurance; student loans; and

assistance for Chrysler and America West Airlines), it

becomes clear that an incomplete assessment of risks leads to

misleading budget presentations and may engender poor policy

decisions. FVA would be a significant step toward improving

this informational deficit.

My views are echoed by a wide array of budget experts. In

March 2010, CBO issued a new report recommending the use of

FVA for federal student loan programs on the grounds that

budget rules do ``not include the costs to taxpayers that

stem from certain risks involved in lending.'' In addition,

the Pew-Peterson Commission on Budget Reform proposed ``fair-

value accounting'' for credit programs and the President's

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

advocated for reform of budget concepts that would more

accurately reflect costs.

In addition to these research views, there is a track

record of success. FVA has already been used successfully for

the budgetary treatment of the Temporary Asset Relief Program

of 2008 (TARP) and the federal assistance to Fannie Mae and

Freddie Mac.

Last but not least, H.R. 3581 would also fix another

shortcoming of FCRA; namely that the administrative costs

associated with federal operations are not included in the

budget cost and must be provided for elsewhere. H.R. 3581

would require that administrative costs (called ``essential

preservation services'') to be accounted for up-front,

thereby balancing the playing field.

In sum, I believe that the Congress should adopt fair value

accounting and, in particular, pass H.R. 3581 in a timely

fashion. I would be happy to discuss any aspect of this issue

in greater detail.

Sincerely,

Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

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

Just two couple of points. Process is important. I guess you could be opposed to process--the gentleman from New Jersey referenced the NCAA. If there were no rules and all the players could just go out and do anything they wanted to, I guess we could say we could rack up a lot of points and scores and do very well.

But there is a reason and there is a method to the game, and that is why you do have rules. And that is actually why you do have the refs. Yeah, the coaches on both sides will complain, but the refs, at the end of the day, are the ones that say, hey, these are what the rules are, and let's play within the confines of them.

Now the second point I was going to make is, I understand this issue is pretty difficult and pretty complicated. The bill is not that long. But the gentleman from New Jersey has it completely backwards when he says, look, Mr. Garrett, you want to go by the CBO, don't you? You want to apply this to the CBO, and that is what your bill is going to do.

No, that is not what I said. I do agree with the CBO. The CBO already does this. It is the CBO that is calling for this. It was the past chairman, the past director of the CBO who says what I just entered into the Record--that we should be doing this. This is already done that way, I inform my colleague from New Jersey.

What we are saying is, if he and I agree that the CBO is, as he just said, this nonpartisan entity which has the right way of handling it, they are handling it the right way.

We are now simply saying, administration, you should be doing what the gentleman from New Jersey and I both say should be done here, what the CBO is saying should be done here, and apply it to OMB and how the administration does it.

So the gentleman has it completely reversed as to what the bill actually says.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Reclaiming my time, what I was just pointing out is you are saying that both sides' coaches were going to be yelling at the refs and they wanted their side, win or lose.

If you want to use your analogy, in a game there has to be rules, and we are saying that the rules that should apply are the rules that--you indicated the CBO is a nonpartisan entity, that they are doing it the right way, and we are saying, exactly.

The CBO is nonpartisan. They are calling for this type of application of the rules. And if we agree on that point, and if you dig into the bill and realize that we are saying it is not to make sure that CBO does it, but that the administration does it.

So reread the bill. You will understand what we are trying to do. And I think, at the end of the day, you and I may actually agree.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the chairman of the full committee, I want to go back to the gentleman from New Jersey who made the point as to which side of this issue is OMB and CBO on, and it is a process issue.

But it is important that, during an appearance before the House Budget Committee, where we considered this legislation, the director of the--and I will stress this point again--the nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, stated, ``We believe that the fair value method of accounting''--which is what is in this bill--``for Federal credit transaction programs provides a more comprehensive measure of a program's true cost.''

This is exactly why we bring this bill to the floor. I know the gentleman indicated that a partisan OMB takes a different view, but the nonpartisan CBO takes the view of this legislation, that we should make sure that there is complete transparency.

Then all the points that the gentleman makes, as far as making the decision as to how many students we should be able to have in these programs, how large is the housing program, and so on and so forth, then we can more accurately make those final determinations once we have the actual numbers accurately before us, and that is all this legislation really does.

With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan), who was able to get a budget out of the Budget Committee in record time the other night, the chairman of the Budget Committee.

I yield myself such time as I may consume

Just one point to that. I have sat through that committee now for a number of years, and since this is an issue that I have been somewhat following for that period of time, I knew that your statement saying that we haven't had the time and haven't spent

the time on hearings and what have you just did not ring true.

So I dug through it, and the fact of the matter is that we have actually had two hearings and two related markups on this legislation, and I think that gives us the information we need now to go forward.

Secondly, to the point that you make that the various programs are unique in their nature, absolutely, and that is why this legislation allows fair value accounting to be applied individually and evaluate each program accordingly.

We do all that in this legislation. It comes about through the multiple hearings and markups that we have had, and I think now is the time to go forward and give the American public the transparency that they are asking for.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Just to set the record straight, actually, we did have hearings on this, and we did have markup hearings on this back in June of 2011. We dug into it at that period of time. The legislation, essentially the same, just in a different cycle, is, in essence, what we have before us today, so we have had that opportunity.

But I will say this. If we see this legislation continue on the floor today and if we see this bill actually pass today, I extend to the gentleman and the members of the committee--or anyone on the other side of the aisle--that my door is open to try to make changes to it that you see appropriate, to make it have the flexibility that you think is not in the bill, which I think is in this bill, and so on and so forth. So I stand ready to continue to work with you on it. But I think that after the hearings we have had and the importance of this legislation, now is the time to move forward.

One last point on this, and I think the chairman of the committee made the point, but let me just reiterate this. At the end of the day, it does not add any additional costs to the American taxpayer. What this bill does is just make transparent the cost that is already there. I am trying to come up with a simple analogy, but fair value accounting is not necessarily one of the simplest things you can find an analogy for, but I guess it might be like this:

You would not go to the store and just go through with your credit card swiping it along, buying the things that you need or think that you need not knowing what they actually cost as you leave the store, just putting them on your bill, knowing that at the end of the day, at the end of the month, you may get a statement. Knowing that you are going to have to pay for that bill, you wouldn't go to the store and do that any more than you should right now with the American public, put them, by using the taxpayers' credit card for all these programs, worthwhile as they may, necessary as they may be, you shouldn't just be swiping that credit card not knowing exactly what the bottom line is, not knowing what the actual cost to the American taxpayer is.

That is all this bill does is just give us that information. And with that information in hand, then we can come together, Republican and Democrat alike, on those areas that we all agree on are necessary for this country and necessary that we expend funds on, with that information in hand, and do it in a more prudent, efficient, and effective manner than we have been in the past where we have done without the information.

With that, then, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion.

Mr. Speaker, a number of questions come to my mind after just hearing the sponsor of the motion. They don't necessarily go in this order.

One is: Why does she want to hide from the American public the actual facts of what they are doing to the American public, as far as spending the taxpayers' money?

The second question that comes to mind is: Why, when the opportunity was given to the other side of the aisle to work with us, to amend the bill or change the bill on those areas that they disagree with on its merits, why did they instead come with this proposal, this motion on the floor totally extraneous to the underlying message and purpose of the bill?

Mr. Speaker, many times we come to the floor and people say that the bill before us is a commonsense piece of legislation. Well, I am going to say it again because this is a commonsense piece of legislation. The underlying bill, maybe we should have had a different name to it. Maybe if we simply called the bill what it is, the ``Knowing What You Are Spending Bill,'' then the other side of the aisle would have agreed with us, wrapped their arms around the bill and us and said let's move forward, because who can disagree with actually know what you are spending?

That is all this bill does. It doesn't eliminate any programs; it doesn't cut any programs; and it doesn't diminish any programs. All it does is allow Congress and the American public to understand what we are spending and what the costs are to the various programs that both sides of the aisle support.

The proponent just now of the motion didn't get into the weeds at all. But let me just, for those just coming to the floor, remind them of what the major provisions of the underlying bill do. There are a number of them. I will give you three highlights.

First and foremost, it brings Federal budgeting in line with what the private sector has already been doing for a long time. It requires the executive branch and Congress to use something called fair value accounting when estimating the cost of Federal credit programs. What does that mean? Again, it just means that, when we spend American taxpayers' dollars, we have to let the taxpayers know how much it is actually costing.

This is not just my idea. This is what the private sector has been doing. This is even what the nonpartisan CBO, Congressional Budget Office, says we should be doing as well.

The second point is it brings Fannie and Freddie on budget. Why do we do that? To recognize the enormous and potential budgetary impact that these housing-related enterprises can and have had on our government. I don't think I have to remind either side of the aisle that they have cost upwards to $187 billion in taxpayer dollars to get it done, and we want to make sure it is on the budget so we can see it clearly.

Thirdly and lastly, this bill would require agencies to make public the budgetary justification for the materials prepared in support of their programs. What is that saying? It just means that, if you have an agency out there that wants to spend your tax dollars, they have to have the justification for it.

I think those are three honest and fair proposals that the American public has a right to know. We can continue to help the poor; we can continue to have ag programs; we can continue to have energy programs; and we can continue to have programs that facilitate housing in this country. But as we do on those programs that we both agree on, let's make sure that we are being honest with the American public and telling them and knowing what it actually costs.

For that reason, I recommend a ``no'' on this motion to recommit that would

eliminate that possibility for transparency, accountability, and openness, and a ``yes'' on the final passage of the legislation.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the Bureau of Financial Protection claims unlimited power to define and regulate every conceivable financial transaction in the country, and yet it claims to be unaccountable to no one. So I find it disturbing that the Bureau collects private credit card data on Americans and does so without the knowledge of those Americans. Its effort is so vast that the Bureau collects information on over 990 million credit card accounts.

According to Dr. Thomas Stratmann, Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University:

There are costs and potential harms to collecting and

maintaining massive databases of personal financial

information; including the potential for abuse, or violation

of consumer privacy, and security concerns in the event of a

data breach.

Mr. Chairman, the Bureau believes that actions must go unquestioned, and now it wants your credit card information, too. This legislation before us protects citizens by protecting and prohibiting the Bureau from collecting Americans' nonpublic personal financial information without first receiving the express permission of the consumer.

I urge my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to respect the financial privacy of all Americans and support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3448) to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to provide for an optional pilot program allowing certain emerging growth companies to increase the tick sizes of their stocks, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 3448, as amended, currently under consideration.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 3448, the Small Cap Liquidity Reform Act of 2013. This bill, approved by a vote of 57-0 in the Financial Services Committee last year, represents yet again another bipartisan and commonsense effort by the House to promote small business capital formation.

I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy) for all of his hard work and leadership in bringing this very important piece of legislation to the floor. I also would like to thank Mr. Carney from Delaware for all of his hard work and support for this legislation as well.

What are we talking about here?

Today, many small, publicly traded companies are finding it more and more difficult to attract investor demand and trading liquidity for their stocks. As a result, these companies may have trouble obtaining the investor capital they need for their companies to grow and create jobs.

H.R. 3448 would begin to address this liquidity crunch by testing, through a pilot program, whether increasing the minimum trading increment, also called the ``tick'' size, for certain emerging growth company stocks, or EGCs, from a penny to 5 cents or 10 cents would promote liquidity by incentivizing market makers and others investors to trade these stocks, and by concentrating this trading interest around fewer price points.

All of this may sound like a lot of Wall Street and stock market jargon, but at its core this bill is a simple bill aimed at helping small American companies obtain the capital that they need from investors so that they can grow their businesses.

What the bill does is leave most of the details of designing and administering the tick size pilot program to the experts at the SEC. As a result, the SEC should have the discretion it needs to devise a pilot program that reflects the views of all market participants and interested parties, and that generates the maximum amount of deep and useful data on how different tick sizes impact trading liquidity in small-cap stocks.

By first establishing a temporary pilot program, this bill will ensure that any potential and permanent changes to tick sizes that may be done sometime in the future will be done only in a thoughtful, incremental, and data-driven manner.

The data generated from this pilot program may also be useful into how other aspects of the stock market work, but on this point, let me be clear. This bill is focused on improving small business capital formation. This is not a bill to reform the fundamental structure of U.S. equity markets, nor is it intended to be a substitute for a more detailed, holistic review by the SEC of how these markets work.

Ultimately, there are no guarantees that a tick size pilot program will achieve the desired results and that the benefits of any future action on tick sizes will outweigh the cost, but we should all be agreed that this commonsense approach will help small businesses grow. It is worth trying, and we need many more like it.

Again, I will conclude by saying that this bill was approved by the Financial Services Committee 57-0. In addition, many market participants, as well as SEC Chair White; at least two of her colleagues, Commissioners Gallagher and Piwowar; and the SEC's Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies, have all vocally supported the concept of a tick size pilot program.

So I hope that this legislation will serve as a final push forward getting this tick size program forward and moving off the ground. I urge my colleagues to, again, promote small business capital formation by passing H.R. 3448, and I urge my friends over in the Senate to take up this bill immediately as well.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy), the prime sponsor of this legislation and the gentleman who has been the driving force behind this idea.

Mr. Speaker, I believe the gentleman from Delaware has already yielded back. So, at this point, I would just like to again thank the gentleman from Delaware for his work, the gentleman from Wisconsin for his leadership on this issue.

And, also on his page, I saw written in a large number was the magic number 57-0. I hope that does send a resounding message over to the other body, to the Senate, to do as they have not been doing for the last 14 months, which is to take up some of these good job-creation bills, a bill that helps promote jobs and small businesses in this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and for leading this Special Order this evening in recognition of what week we are in, Celebrating Marriage Week, and recognizing the very importance that marriage has to our society.

Our society it can be said is built on four pillars: marriage, family, church, and the government, and today, we are faced with the reality that one of these pillars is crowding out and attempting to change the makeup of the other three. We have seen that some of our government's policies have discouraged traditional family marriage and traditional family structure as well, but I believe our government has an obligation to support policies that support marriage and support the American dream.

One of the most positive influences on a society is a strong family structure. Marriage itself is essential. It is essential to society, and it is essential to our American country and the American Dream. What I say is not ideology; what I say is data-driven. It is verified by the facts that marriage alone stands as a strong social fabric, a stronger economy, and a better future for our children. See, individuals who are part of a marriage household, a married household, are more likely to overcome disadvantaged backgrounds. They are less likely to live in poverty. Married individuals are more likely to earn more money, to save more money, and are less likely to be in debt. See, marriage is not only important for the economic health of our Nation, but it is also important for future generations as well. Children are more likely to succeed not only if they come from a married household, but the chances of prosperity, and this is interesting, are greater even further if they are raised in a community, a neighborhood, if you will, that shares the value of marriage. Children who come from a married household, to give one statistic, are 82 percent less likely to live in poverty and are more likely to gain a college education and succeed in society.

What is most essential to note is it is not only imperative for a child to be raised in a two-parent household, but it is also important for children to be raised, as I said a moment ago, in a community that values marriage and values family. Children who are raised in that sort of community will have higher rates of upward social mobility. I would note, to truly address some of the issues that Congress here tries to address, such as child poverty, we must address the root causes of those problems, and we must then acknowledge a solution to those problems as well.

So if you want to encourage economic growth, reduce poverty and ensure a prosperous Nation for future children, our government must encourage a strong family structure.

I said once before that this is not ideology-driven, this is data- driven. Why do I say that? Well, if you want to try to answer the question of what are the factors that are preventing, for example, poor children from getting ahead, for mobility, we have data to support it. There is an important new Harvard study that looks at the best data on mobility in America that just came out recently. The name of that study is ``Where is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States.'' It is a long title, but basically a study that came out of Harvard by economist Raj Chetty, and some of these colleagues over in Berkeley as well.

What they did was to dive down into the numbers, if you will, to see what are the characteristics most likely to predict mobility for lower- income children. This Harvard study asked which factors are the strongest predictors of upward mobility in various situations. In other words, which are the factors you can look to to see what is it that will bring children in poverty situations to a higher level. They went through all of the various factors you might imagine, but of all of the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one that clearly stands out above the rest is family structure, meaning what we are talking about here today, marriage.

I will quote from the study, if I may:

The strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of

children with single parent.

In other words, the strongest indicator of where they are going to have a problem with social mobility, in other words the indicator that says what is most likely to suppress or to keep children from being able to rise up and increase their stature in the community, to be able to go to college, get a job and support themselves and be productive in society, in short, live the American Dream, is whether or not they come from single-family households or whether they come from a married situation:

Children of married parents also have higher rates of upper

mobility if they live in communities with fewer single

parents.

Why do I say that? Well, again, what this recognizes is it is not just an isolationist situation, it is not just if you alone are married; it depends on whether or not you live in a neighborhood or you live in a community where everyone else around you is married, too. If you do, then you are a fortunate child because you live in a situation where you are more likely to be able to say: My future is good; my future is one where I am going to be able to prosper. My future is one where I will probably be able to move out of my current economic situation and do better.

So those two factors: it is whether you come from single parents or married parents, and also whether you live in a community where people around you are all single or people around you are all married.

So I think it is interesting. It is also interesting that this study comes not from some university that you might think of as being more conservative, but coming from Berkeley and Harvard, I guess we consider the source.

In closing, a lot of research, including some new research from Brookings Institution, shows what has already been shown, the first point, and that is to say if you are married, you have a better chance of rising up the economic ladder. This study now adds the additional feature of the community aspect.

My third point, what we are saying here tonight, is not ideology- driven at all. What I am referring to is a data-driven decision that we can make as Members of Congress. As a recent author pointed out, we just had the President of the United States standing before us saying that we must be a data-driven Congress and a data-driven government, and I agree with him. The data is now out there. The data shows to increase opportunity in America, to increase upward mobility in America, to sustain the American Dream, people of all races and people of all income levels have a far better chance if they come from a married family and a married community as well. So to understand this and have government have an effect on civil society, we must understand these parameters, and I applaud the gentleman for bringing this very important issue to the floor tonight.

Mr. Speaker, today, as we remember a somber moment in our Nation's history, we must also remember what values our Nation was founded on and remember we must always protect those values.

Our Declaration of Independence promises ``life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,'' and as the chairman of the Constitution Caucus, I pledge to fight for the liberties recognized by our Founding Fathers.

For 41 years, since ROE v. WADE, more than 56 million unborn children have been denied the undeniable and inalienable rights we hold so dear. Pro-abortion advocates may want Americans to believe abortion is an ordinary medical procedure, but ending a human life is never ordinary, and denying the most basic of rights--the right to life--to unborn children is not, and never will be, normal. Discrimination against a person based upon their age, their size or development should never be acceptable.

I join my colleagues tonight to speak out for the value of human life because we must speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. We must continue to fight to protect the most fundamental right: the right to life.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2274) to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to provide for a notice-filing registration procedure for brokers performing services in connection with the transfer of ownership of smaller privately held companies and to provide for regulation appropriate to the limited scope of the activities of such brokers, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to submit extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 2274, as amended, currently under consideration.

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

I rise in support of this good piece of legislation, H.R. 2274. It is the Small Business Mergers, Acquisitions, Sales, and Brokerage Simplification Act. It is introduced by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga), who will be speaking momentarily.

Mr. Speaker, during the period of overly burdensome Big Government-- of ObamaCare and of Dodd-Frank and thousands and thousands more regulations costing Americans literally trillions of dollars--it is really no surprise that the economic growth and job creation in this country remain sluggish.

America's small businesses are the primary engine of job creation, for they are the ones who are disproportionately affected by simply a deluge of new rules and regulations coming out of Washington daily. In fact, according to a recent survey, small businesses continue to identify government regulation and red tape as the single most important problem facing them.

While our colleagues in the Senate appear unwilling these days to pass any legislation to help create jobs, well, we have H.R. 2274 in the House that we take up, and it is done in a bipartisan manner. It is a commonsense piece of legislation that will remove some of these unnecessary regulations and obstacles to small business development, growth, and job creation.

What it would do is exempt brokers who perform services in connection with the transfer of ownership of small, privately held companies--that are also known as M&A brokers--from the SEC's costly one-size-fits-all registration requirements that we have right now.

While terms that we sometimes hear in the press and elsewhere-- mergers, acquisitions, brokers--may give you the image of big Wall Streets and what have you, make no mistake about it, this bill is about helping Main Street.

M&A brokers play a very, very important role helping small businesses and small business owners successfully navigate their way through and transfer their company, or sell their company, to new owners, new enterprises, instead of simply closing up their shop and going out of business.

Yet under the current SEC one-size-fits-all registration regime, M&A brokers face a myriad of costly regulations. Unfortunately, M&A brokers have to pass these costs on to, well, other small businesses and, of course, eventually the public.

It is no wonder this legislation has now received widespread and bipartisan support. In fact, this bill was unanimously approved by the committee 57-0. Let me get that straight: 57-0.

I would like to thank the sponsor, Mr. Huizenga, for all his hard work on this legislation and bringing it to the floor at a time like this when America's small businesses are struggling through a mire of regulation and red tape. This type of bipartisan pro-small business, pro-jobs legislation is exactly the type of thing we need.

I urge my colleagues on both sides to pass it, as we did in the committee, in a bipartisan manner.

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

I thank the gentlelady for working with us on this, as she says, sensible piece of legislation.

And with that, I yield such time as the gentleman may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga), the sponsor of the legislation before the House at this time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Connecticut has the unique ability, in order to come to the floor and work in a manner where both sides said we had a bipartisan joint piece of legislation, a jobs-creating legislation, to turn this moment into a partisan attack.

No, I never once said I am against a blanket condemnation of all regulations. In fact, if the gentleman from Connecticut had listened closely, he would have heard that we are, I think, in a bipartisan manner, opposed to overly excessive regulation, regulation that does not make sense, regulation that hurts jobs. I think that is what his colleague also said. She is opposed to those unnecessary regulations, and that is what this bill is about. We are in favor--I think the gentlelady and I both said this--of smart regulation. That is what this bill before us is about trying to achieve.

If he wants to take a look at bad regulation, all we need to do is look at the excessive and the inappropriate regulation that we had prior to the '08 crisis, the fact that we had examiners and regulators in each and every one of the major failed institutions that led up to this crisis, and those individuals failed to do their jobs. Those individuals failed to find the problems before they came to a head. Those individuals failed to find situations even when they were told about them in such cases as Stanford or Madoff or a list of other ones I could go down here as well.

We had regulators who did not perform their job. Even though they had the authority, the ability, the financing, the money and everything else necessary to do it, they turned a blind eye to it and failed to do so. This is not a time for a partisanship. This a time to commend both the sponsor of the legislation and the gentlelady who joins with me on this to say that we can get together; we can find commonality when we want to have smart legislation and smart regulation. And I think that is what we should be commending and moving forward on this legislation today.

With that, I don't believe we have any other speakers; but I reserve the balance of my time to close, unless the minority have other speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I begin by thanking the gentlelady for her leadership on this legislation, adopting the word I just used, which is smart regulation is smart legislation, but also the words you used as well as far as reducing barriers and streamlining, which is really what the gentleman from Michigan has accomplished in this legislation that is before us.

The other takeaway I am going to take from the gentlewoman's comment as well is twofold: A, this is being done in a bipartisan manner; but B, we need to move this thing forward. By that, I

mean the House of Representatives today, in a bipartisan manner, is going to be moving a good piece of job-creating legislation.

The next step, we know, of course, is just across the Capitol, in the U.S. Senate. We want to make sure that this legislation, in a bipartisan manner, also moves there as well. Hopefully, we can link arms and join in getting them to move this legislation there as well.

With that, I thank the gentlelady. I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga) for all of his leadership in the committee and his work on this legislation and the other legislation he is leading on as well.

With that, I encourage the passage of H.R. 2274, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 801) to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to make the shareholder threshold for registration of savings and loan holding companies the same as for bank holding companies.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials for the Record on H.R. 801, currently under consideration.

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

I rise today, as I did a moment ago as well, in support of this good, commonsense legislation, which is H.R. 801, the Holding Company Registration Threshold Equalization Act. I also, just like with the prior legislation, would like to commend the bipartisan nature of the legislation before us and the bipartisan nature of the sponsors of this legislation, Representatives Womack, Himes, Delaney, and Mrs. Wagner, as well, for their outstanding work on getting this important measure to the floor today.

What does it do?

H.R. 801 basically corrects a technical oversight from last Congress' JOBS Act, which was the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, and it does so by ensuring that savings and loans holding companies, or SLHCs, are able to take advantage of the law's provisions that modify the thresholds by which bank holding companies are forced to register or allowed to deregister with the SEC.

Most savings and loan holding companies are organized very similarly to bank holding companies and are subject to similar regulatory oversight. Because this is the case, it is appropriate now for us to correct this technical oversight in the law and streamline the registration and deregistration thresholds of savings and loan and bank holding companies.

I will end now where I began, and that is to thank the leadership for bringing up this very important legislation, and the sponsors as well for working in a bipartisan manner. I ask that all Members support this commonsense legislation and the Senate consider it without any delay.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I, too, thank the gentleman from Connecticut.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack), the prime sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner), also a prime sponsor of the legislation before us and a leading and active member on the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I was just thinking as I was sitting here.

Speaker Boehner raised the question at the beginning of this administration, where are the jobs? And it is a question that I continue to get when I go home to my district, where are the jobs after all the years of this administration? And it is a question that I hear on the floor once in a while from Members who don't really follow the activity on the floor closely, where are the bills to help create jobs, as if we are not moving them.

Well, today, Mr. Speaker, we have moved two more to the laundry list of other legislation out of this House to answer the question, how can we help facilitate and create more jobs for the American public? That is why I am so pleased to be here with the sponsors of this legislation in a bipartisan manner, H.R. 801, and to be able to get this through the House to answer the question, where are the jobs?

Well, the House of Representatives continues in its tradition of passing legislation to answer that question, to make more jobs for the American public, to streamline the regulatory process, and to reduce the number of Americans who are no longer in the workforce whatsoever.

So I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to not only pass the legislation today, but also to encourage the U.S. Senate, where some often say all good bills go to die, to pick up this legislation and pass it in a forthright manner.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chair.

Before I give my remarks, I just want to say in response that I believe the chairman said that he is not opposed to all regulations. I think he said he is in favor of regulation, but make sure that it is smart and appropriate regulation--at least, that is my position, as well.

Understand, too, to the gentleman's point, that even when this legislation is passed, the SEC still will have significant authority, will still have its enforcement division, will still have its new asset management unit, which has recently recruited industry professionals with asset management experience to serve as specialists in this unit to do the investigations that the gentleman wants to have continue, and it will continue even after the passage of this legislation.

With that said, I want to again thank the chairman. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt), and also the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), as well, for their hard work on this very important legislation, as well as all our cosponsors on both sides of the aisle. For that reason, I am pleased to support H.R. 1105. And do make no mistake about it; this is bipartisan legislation, and it is all about helping small businesses and helping to create more jobs in this country.

Today, more than 17,700 companies, backed by private equity employ over 7.5 million people. In my home State of New Jersey alone, 597 private equity-backed companies support more than 377,000 workers, while the New Jersey Division of Pensions and Benefits has invested billions on behalf of retirees and private equity firms. Hopefully, all those facts give you the facts you need to know how important it is to the creation of jobs. Yet despite their long track record supporting small business nationwide, the Dodd-Frank Act has imposed enormous and numerous burdens on private equity firms, forcing most fund advisers to spend literally millions of dollars complying with new SEC registration and reporting requirements.

While these burdensome regulations no doubt crimp the flow of much- needed investment dollars to America's small businesses, there is little or no evidence that they are needed to promote the stability of our financial system or to protect investors. Unlike, say, Federal housing policy and the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private equity did not cause the financial crisis and is not--and never has been--a source of systemic risk.

As former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro admitted back in 2011: ``Private equity funds have less potential to pose systemic risk than any other type of private funds.'' Indeed, if the SEC is so concerned about the systemic risk of private equity funds, their recent examinations of private equity advisers certainly do not show it.

As Chair White recently said: Neither the SEC's examinations staff nor the Division of Investment Management ``has conducted examinations of an adviser to a private fund based primarily on systemic risk concerns.''

She also said: SEC examiners ``have not to date reviewed systemic risk issues as part of their examinations of private funds.''

Thirdly: None of the advisers to private funds that withdrew their registration in 2012 ``had systemic market impact.''

And so now we must ask ourselves this question: Do we really want the SEC, already saddled with a multitude of unfinished, nongermane Dodd- Frank mandates expending valuable resources on risks that don't even exist? In addition, because only sophisticated investors may invest in these private equity funds, the need to protect investors in this case is more limited compared to other areas of the security market.

While I wholeheartedly support the SEC's mission to protect investors, the agency with limited resources should be devoted, first and foremost, to protecting the less sophisticated, the retail mom-and- pop investors. They need the most protection.

It was Paul Kanjorski, who was in Congress when Dodd-Frank went through. He said:

I, for one, could care less about high-wealth individuals

who want to contribute their money to a group of investors.

If they want to take the shot of losing it, it does not

really affect the rest of society.

It also bears mentioning that this legislation in no way alters the many existing tools the SEC already has to prevent and punish fraud in the private equity industry for the benefit of sophisticated investors and the broader economy.

I urge support of H.R. 1105 at a time when most small businesses continue to have difficulty getting credit and need to grow. Passing this bipartisan legislation, commonsense legislation, should be no a no-brainer.

I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, let's step back for a moment and just see where we may agree on certain points.

I guess at the 30,000-foot level we agree on the fact that we want to work together on legislation that will try to prevent the next financial crisis. We agree that we want to try to protect investors.

It is after that level, however, when we get into the details that we disagree.

As far as protecting and trying to make sure the next financial crisis does not occur, there has been no evidence either today on the floor or in the committee process during the discussion of this debate or in any of the debates when we discussed Dodd-Frank that the origin of the last financial crisis was from private equity. No evidence. Or from hedge funds. No evidence. Or from venture capital. No evidence whatever. So to say that we need to have extensive, overbearing, overlapping, extraneous regulation on private equity to prevent the next one, they have no evidence to say that was the cause in the past.

We say, just as the gentleman from Connecticut said before, venture capital is excluded from it. Why not private equity as well? And that is why we have come together in a bipartisan manner to make sure the next crisis doesn't occur in an area such as this.

In the second area, the point was made as far as the cost. The gentleman from Massachusetts said, Well, we're talking about the larger funds here. If he was at the hearing last night in the Rules Committee, he would have heard one of his colleagues, Mr. Polis from Colorado, refute that point.

Why is that? This is what he said. When you are talking about firms, $150 million, $200 million sounds like large firms, right? But that is just how much money is under management. The actual money they are actually spending in the company is just a fraction of it. A little tiny fraction, as he pointed out. It is around 2 percent.

So if you are talking about a $150 million fund under management, it sounds big. Actually, that is around a $3 million business. And now you are asking that $3 million business to have to pay upwards of half a million dollars each year for all their compliance costs and the examination, which goes to the last point by the gentlelady from New York.

We would love to try to find some common ground on her amendment, but her amendment simply goes to the first point and the initial filing of the forms and what have you. After that, there is the extraneous additional examinations and all the other costs that are so overly burdensome that we have found both in a bipartisan manner, as Mr. Himes from Connecticut has already pointed out, is overly burdensome and unnecessary.

If there was some other way to pull this together in a bipartisan manner more so than we have already done, I would do so, but I am glad that the gentleman from Virginia and also the gentleman from Connecticut have been able to come together on all the points to come to a final bill in a bipartisan manner. And I support the legislation.

Madam Chair, on rollcall No. 605 I was detained chairing a Financial Services Subcommittee hearing.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment No. 2 Offered by Ms. Castor of Florida

Madam Chair, on rollcall No. 606, I was detained chairing a Financial Services subcommittee hearing. Had I been present, I would have voted, ``no.''

Amendment No. 3 Offered by Ms. Speier

Madam Chair, on rollcall No. 607 I was detained chairing a Financial Services subcommittee hearing. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment No. 4 Offered by Ms. Jackson Lee