Providing for Consideration of H.R. Operational Risk Capital Requirements for Banking Organizations, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Comprehensive Regulatory Review Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Colorado for yielding me this time to speak on this rule.

I have to admit, I was a little confused when I walked in, based on what I was hearing on the other side, of what bill we were actually discussing. And let me just say this, Mr. Speaker, before I get into why I am rising today in support of these important bills that have bipartisan support.

Being someone who has been on the receiving end of being shot at, we have to focus on how do we make our children safe. I think everybody in this Chamber is deeply, deeply concerned on that. We have to assume the next shooter is there and he already has a weapon, and the actions that we take must be focused clearly on how do we make these children safe. I don't think there is any person in this Chamber who would disagree with that, and especially, I know, on our side of the aisle, so we are committed to that.

But today, we are here speaking on a rule that is very important for two substantive bills that we are bringing up, and I rise in support of not only my bill, the Comprehensive Regulatory Review Act, but also my colleague, Mr. Luetkemeyer's bill, which we are also discussing here.

This week, the House is continuing to take up strongly bipartisan bills from the Financial Services Committee. The committee has passed, so far, Mr. Speaker, 91 bills in this Congress, and we have taken our remarkable productivity to the floor by passing 36 bills out of this Chamber, and six of them have been signed into law.

My bill, which we are beginning to debate here today, is another strongly bipartisan bill which will provide regulatory relief for financial institutions and increase access to capital and credit for businesses and consumers.

Mr. Speaker, there is a historical trend for the government to overregulate after an economic recession. The recovery from the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 was weak and slow for many reasons, not least of which was overregulation of the financial sector by the Dodd-Frank Act and the previous administration.

Some would argue that there is also a trend to underregulate during good economic times like we are living in now. Some say that the regulatory relief legislation that we passed out of the Financial Services Committee will lead to abuses by big banks and other financial institutions and cause another financial crisis.

But these bills will not cause the government to underregulate banks and credit unions. They will simply implement smart regulation. In other words, these bills do not gut or eliminate regulation. They right-size regulation and make it more efficient.

Back in 1996, Congress did a good thing by passing the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act, or as we call it, EGRPRA. EGRPRA requires the banking regulatory agencies to go back once every 10 years--that is, once a decade--and review their regulations to identify those that may be outdated, unnecessary, or overly burdensome, and then they are to send a report to Congress. It also requires the agencies to eliminate regulations if they determine they are inappropriate.

Make no mistake, EGRPRA was a good idea back in 1996, and it is a very valuable tool, but far too often EGRPRA regulatory reviews have been viewed as merely a check-the-box exercise by these agencies and in the financial sector. Many believe the two EGRPRA reports, which were released in 2007 and then a decade later in 2017, were lackluster and could have produced more useful recommendations to policymakers; and under the current EGRPRA law, it will be another decade before we could actually look at those regulations again.

EGRPRA could also result in more action from the regulators to clean up outdated and unnecessary rules. That is why it is important for Congress to revisit EGRPRA and to revitalize this law.

My bill contains several reforms to the EGRPRA review process that will breathe new life into the law and make sure it is not simply a check-the-box exercise for regulators. This bill will require more frequent regulatory reviews by moving the review cycle from 10 to 7 years. It will expand EGRPRA to include all regulated financial institutions instead of only the insured depository institutions. It will expand EGRPRA to include the CFPB, and the bill will also codify the National Credit Union Administration into EGRPRA, since the NCUA participated in the latest review voluntarily.

The bill will also require the CFPB to use its findings from its Dodd-Frank regulatory reviews and its EGRPRA reports so the CFPB does not waste time on rules it has already reviewed. And most importantly, this bill will require the agencies to tailor rules they find to be unnecessary, outdated, or overly burdensome based on the size and risk profile of the bank or credit union--that is, the regulators making the determination, not the banks and not the institutions.

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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Mr. Speaker, I am wrapping up.

This bill passed out of the committee with a strong bipartisan vote of more than two-thirds of the committee members, including all Republicans and eight Democrats. I urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bills.

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