Providing for Consideration of H.R. 10, Financial Choice Act of 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, when former President Obama signed the Dodd- Frank financial control law into law about 7 years ago, supporters promised that it would repair the economy; they promised that it would end too big to fail; they promised it would enhance financial stability and protect consumers. But none of those promises have been kept.

Nearly 9 years after the financial crisis, Americans are still stuck in the slowest, weakest economic recovery in 70 years. The percentage of Americans who are actually in the workforce is at its lowest level since the late 1970s, and we still have not fully reached the potential of our economic recovery. This is precisely because of the Dodd-Frank law. The Dodd-Frank law has clogged the plumbing of our economy with an avalanche of red tape.

Far from ending too big to fail, Dodd-Frank has guaranteed that too- big-to-fail banks will get a taxpayer bailout whenever they go into distress.

As big banks have gotten bigger as a result of Dodd-Frank, the small banks, the community banks, the credit unions--the credit providers for the entrepreneurs, the small businesses, the job creators in this country--are fewer. That is a huge problem for the dynamism of the economy, and that is one of the reasons why we haven't seen economic recovery the way that we should.

Dodd-Frank has made it more difficult for small businesses and startups to obtain capital to grow, invest, and hire. Before Dodd- Frank, small business lending was more than 150 percent of large bank lending. Today, due to Dodd-Frank, small bank lending is about 80 percent below that of large bank lending. This is why new business formation is at a generational low, because small businesses and startups and entrepreneurs have much more success obtaining capital from community banks than Wall Street banks.

Financial services and products have been impaired. Since Dodd-Frank, the number of banks offering free checking has shrunk from 75 percent to 37 percent, the ranks of the unbanked have gone up, and one in five community banks in my home State of Kentucky have disappeared as a result of Dodd-Frank.

Consumer protection? Hardly. Taking away financial services and products, eliminating competition and choice from the marketplace, eliminating free checking, taking away access to credit, that is not protecting consumers. That is hurting consumers. Dodd-Frank is the worst bill for consumers that we could possibly have.

We need the Financial CHOICE Act, which will preserve access to financial services and products and give consumers access to mortgages and access to financial products like credit cards and overdraft protection and home equity loans. All of these services and products are going away because of Dodd-Frank and the busybodies in Washington.

We need to protect consumers. There is nothing wrong with effective regulation, but this is regulation gone awry. It is unaccountable, it is not transparent, it is hurting the American consumers, and it is certainly not adding to financial stability when big banks and Wall Street are getting bigger and our community banks are going away.

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