Providing for Consideration of H.R. Ada Education and Reform Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting Consumers' Access to Credit Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Trid Improvement Act of and Providing for Proceedings During the Period From February Through February 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come before the House during this rules debate on this package of bipartisan bills that have been worked on for two Congresses now and that address a number of issues that I think Members on both sides of the aisle and our committee recognize would improve the capital market system, improve access to capital for business and consumers, and, also, reduce the red tape, the bureaucracy associated with trying to run a community bank and provide services to our consumers, both businesses and families, that has been made so challenging since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act almost 8 years ago.

You know, I was coming to Washington yesterday, and I was reading the weekend business section. There was a story there about Richard Griffin from Crossett, Arkansas, who has owned a community bank there for decades. It is about a $30 million, $35 million bank.

He just said that, with his 13 employees, he just couldn't comply with the level of regulatory burden following Dodd-Frank that was so geared to our biggest financial institutions, our most complex financial institutions, companies like those headquartered up in New York. He just felt compelled to exit the business and leave that town, leave the local board of directors, the local management team, and turn it over to an out-of-State company.

Crossett, Arkansas, is a fine town, and it deserves a good banking presence by a number of competitors, home to Georgia-Pacific and all of their activities there.

Mr. Speaker, these bills are, as I say, bipartisan, and they are needed across this country. Let me just touch on a few of them.

The ones that I think provide the most benefit to community bankers and businesses and customers of those local banks are, first of all, Mr. Stivers' bill, which eliminates a barrier, a well-intended licensing provision if you wanted to make mortgage loans after the '08 crisis.

Congress thought it was a good idea to make sure that mortgage lenders were qualified, so they made them get a license. We can debate whether that was too much work or not or whether it was worthwhile or not. They made bankers get it and nonbanks.

But in this bill, Mr. Stivers simply says, if you are going to try to change jobs and you hold a mortgage license, that you just have a transition period where you don't have to go requalify for that if you are going to work for a nonbank or you are going to work for somebody in another State. It only passed our committee 60-0, so it doesn't get much more bipartisan than that. That will help banks reduce red tape, recruit loan officers, and get them to work faster serving customers.

Likewise, the TRID Improvement Act of 2017 is something that I worked on in a variety of ways, and it is included in this package. It allows States where you can buy both a personal policy for your title insurance as well as the title coverage for a closing to show you the real discount.

Mr. Speaker, the real irony here is that, when Elizabeth Warren was a staffer and a college professor, one of her goals for the CFPB was simplification, that we take all these complicated forms and we would make them easier to use.

Well, here is an example of the exact opposite. The new Truth in Lending forms for real estate settlements were made more complicated. After 8 years of dealing with it, this was a classic example of trying to make it simpler.

Let's actually show the consumer what the real closing costs are for their title insurance. This will speed mortgage closings. This will reduce errors in mortgage closings. This will reduce consumer confusion about the so-called Know Before You Owe rule. I would argue this rule has made it much more difficult to know what you owe before you borrow it, and this is a small step in improving that.

Mr. Speaker, these things help our community banks.

There is one other in this package we are considering today, Mr. McHenry's bill, which allows community banks that originate loans, consumer loans, commercial loans, that are selling those loans to a nonbank, a nonbank servicer or a nonbank packager, to be able to pass through the rate that they originated the loan for. There was a Supreme Court case that has made that more complicated, that said you can't pass through the rate and that State banking laws don't preempt our State usury laws for this kind of work.

So I commend Mr. McHenry for this, because this improves liquidity to our community banking system and, again, lowers rates for consumers, makes products more accessible, and makes our small community banks more competitive.

I will close by just touching on a couple of other measures that I think help businesses, help capital markets, help capital flow.

One, you just heard my friend from California (Mr. Royce) talk about his bill. That will help capital markets flow. That will create parity among our exchanges, lowering costs for companies that want to go public and have their action there, raise capital on the public markets.

Mr. Duffy has a bill that requires the SEC to actually get a subpoena if they want to get source code from a capital markets provider, someone who is managing money, someone who is offering to manage portfolios or offer a mutual fund company, and this is very, very helpful. I think, when you want to get your secret sauce for your business and the government wants it, they ought to have a subpoena.

That is all that this bill does. It doesn't change the rules about that. It doesn't change anything other than saying, if you want this information, you ought to go and get a subpoena, and I believe that will improve capital formation.

So, Mr. Speaker, these are good bills. These are bipartisan bills. These are bills that we have worked on for two Congresses that will help consumers, increase access to credit, lower the cost of that credit, and increase capital flows to the business sector to support the growth that the American people want.

I appreciate the Rules Committee allowing me to speak on these bills. I appreciate Chairman Hensarling putting them together.

And to my friends on the other side, these are bills that went through regular order.

These are bills that are bipartisan. These are bills that have the support of the opposition. We have put them together in a bipartisan package today under this rule because our friends down the hall in the United States Senate are rapidly moving a bipartisan package of improvements for our capital markets and our banks, something that we want, something that we have waited some 8 years for. So this allows us to work better with our colleagues over in the Senate, where 14 Democrats have partnered with Senator Crapo on the Banking Committee to move bipartisan legislation that will help us grow our economy.

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