Retail Investor Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. I thank the ranking member for her outstanding work and efforts in this area. The gentlewoman has truly been a champion for people--the very little people who some people have styled we are talking about today.

Mr. Speaker, the best way, without question, to get the SEC to act would be to allow the DOL to act. If the DOL is allowed to promulgate its rules, I guarantee you the SEC will move with an additional amount of deliberate speed.

Currently, the DOL is simply attempting to cause people who act as financial advisers to have fidelity to their clients above their own personal interests. What is so unusual about the concept is the person who is working for you having fidelity that benefits you as opposed to the person who is working for you.

Right now, as the laws exist, a person acting as a financial adviser can become a financial predatory adviser. Not all are. I am not accusing the industry of anything. I am just making a point about what can happen. When this happens, the person who is to give you advice--for a fee, I might add--can sell you a product for a higher fee and that has a higher risk as opposed to a similar product with a lower fee and that carries a lower risk. The higher fee is the temptation that will cause predatory financial advisers to manifest themselves and take actions against the best interests of the clients, who are paying them to represent them and benefit them.

We ought not allow this kind of action to be sanctioned by the Congress of the United States of America. What the President is attempting to do by and through the DOL is to simply say: If you are going to represent your client, you are going to put your interest beneath the client's interest. You will subordinate your interest to your client's interest. You will not allow yourself to yield to the temptation to take a higher amount of money for yourself and put your client at a greater amount of risk.

That is all this rule is about.

Let's allow the rule to come into existence. If we want to debate it thereafter and amend it, we can. But let's not prevent it from ever manifesting itself by causing some to believe that the SEC will do what the DOL will not, because the evidence is not there to support the notion that we are going to get faster results from the SEC.

Finally, this: in a righteous world, we would be calling some of this activity fraud.

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