Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I had not planned on talking about the bill we have before us, S. 2155, but the other day I was listening to another Member speak, and this Member was talking about how this bill could threaten and possibly increase the predatory practices of people who had mobile home loans.
As a person who had a mobile home loan and somebody who lived in a mobile home park, I thought I would try to speak maybe about the practical easing--what we are trying to accomplish with this bill. The truth is, I would go further on regulatory tailoring than we have. We didn't because we wanted bipartisan agreement on this bill, which we have.
As a matter of fact, I thank the members on the Banking Committee who joined with me and other members to make sure we kept the bill tailored enough so we had bipartisan support.
On mobile homes--we get out here in the Senate, and we talk about facts and figures. I can talk about the fact that half of my community banks have ceased to exist in North Carolina since the crisis. I can talk about a number of people I speak with who can't get loans, but what I thought I would talk about is my own personal experience as a 16-year-old, 17-year-old kid living in a trailer park working with my father.
He would do maintenance work. If a house caught on fire or there was some sort of insurance damage, he would work with the insurance companies to actually do repair work, and I was his handyman when we would do these projects. We did not have a whole lot of money. My father didn't have a lot of cash on hand, so the way we did it is, when you had this insurance job, you bid on the insurance job. You knew how much money you would make at the end. Then you go to a bank and get what is called a 90-day note. Most of these projects were about 60- to 90-day projects, and you would go to a banker whom you had built a relationship with, and you would ask them to trust you to get this project done. You would show them the project you were doing, and he would underwrite a loan that you had to pay back in 90 days. That is why they called it a 90-day note.
Today, in the postcrisis world, that virtually never happens. Today, we don't have community banks and personal banking relationships that people can rely on to get access to capital. Even worse, with all the community banks and smaller banks consolidating, ceasing to exist, there are entire areas of North Carolina--a lot of people think North Carolina is an urban State. The fact is, about half our population, about 5 million people, live in rural areas. They have been hardest hit by the consolidation of banks and the ceasing to exist of these sort of lending institutions out in communities like the community I lived in when I was 17 years old. They are not getting the money they need to make ends meet.
What this bill is trying to do is recognize that, of course, after the financial crisis, there was a regulatory exposure we needed to address. The problem is, we simply went too far or at least with the passing of time we now know we can claw back those regulations on certain banks--particularly community and regional banks. That is all this bill is intended to do.
As a matter of fact, this bill allows the regulators to go back after those banks that are under the $250 billion threshold if they determine that the practices they are involved in are particularly problematic or may have a systemic impact on the financial system as a whole.
What we are trying to do is make sure we start seeing community banks pop up in rural areas like the place I lived in outside of Nashville, TN, where bankers could work with people and give them the resources they need to pay their bills. Even as late as just a couple of years ago--we have some folks who are speaking against the bill who said it was important for us to advance these sorts of changes. As a matter of fact, one Member said: ``It is important we advance this conversation to ensure that prudential regulations for regional banks are crafted appropriately.'' That is what this bill does.
Another Member or maybe the same Member said: ``We all agree that regional banks are not systemically important.'' Regional banks are the bigger banks. They would be like BB&T or Fifth Third Bank.
They are not systemically important. Well, then, I guess we can all agree that the community banks and smaller banks aren't. That is what this bill is about, some of the midsized regional banks and community banks. We said we need to tailor it, and that is what this bipartisan bill does.
Another Member said: ``I continue to believe we will not be successful in providing regulatory relief to institutions of any size if we don't have broad, bipartisan consensus.'' That is what this bill has.
We always talk about the polar environment here and how we can get nothing done. This is a bill that has had members of the Committee on Banking, on which I serve, join together to make sure that all we advanced out of the committee was a bipartisan consensus for regulatory relief that allows cash to flow to people who need it--community banks, regional banks that have a more intimate relationship with people who need access to capital. That is what this bill does. For the life of me, I can't understand why we can't all agree.
You have these discussions here where it sounds like we are doing some big-bank relief--not at all. I have a couple of large banking institutions in North Carolina, and they are going to have to continue to submit 60,000-page, 100,000-page stress tests and CCAR reports to make sure they don't create a systemic threat. This bill doesn't touch that.
What this bill touches is a part of the ecosystem that is suffering. What this bill does is reduce the regulatory burden so that guy who existed back in the midseventies who would give my dad a 90-day note can now do it and not have to say no because they simply can't afford to do it either because it affects their portfolio or because they are spending so much money on regulatory relief that they have to go after the bigger loans. It is the people at my level at that time back in the seventies who suffer.
This is a bipartisan bill, it is a responsible bill, and it is a bill that is going to provide much needed relief.
I thank the Members on both sides of the aisle who recognize that this is a prudent bill, that it is measured. I thank Chairman Crapo for all the great work he has done to live up to his commitment to the Members on the other side of the aisle to keep this tailored and to do exactly what we said we were going to do. I look forward to its passage.
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