Prudential Regulator Oversight Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LOUDERMILK. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4841, the Prudential Regulator Oversight Act. First, I would like to thank Mr. Phillips for his leadership on this bipartisan bill and for being willing to address Republicans' concerns with some of the language that was in the original text. Mr. Phillips has worked diligently to address committee Republicans' views before, during, and after the markup, and as a result, this is a strongly bipartisan bill.

This bill is about transparency and oversight of the federal banking regulators. It would require the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair, and National Credit Union Administration Chair to testify before the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee annually. The bill would harmonize that requirement with the existing requirement for the Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision to testify twice a year. The bill would also require these agencies to submit reports about their activities to Congress twice a year. I appreciate that Mr. Phillips agreed to add several clarifications in the bill to ensure that confidential supervisory information is not included in these reports.

Requiring these regulators to testify every year will help ensure that Congress is having a regular dialogue with these agencies. This will foster greater transparency into the agencies' activities and assist Congress in doing its job of conducting robust oversight of federal regulators. Some may question why this bill is needed, because all of these regulators testified before the Financial Services Committee in May of last year. However, it had been three and a half years since anyone from the FDIC or NCUA had testified at the committee before that hearing.

As the Ranking Member of the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, I also appreciate that the bill requires the banking regulators to report to Congress about financial institutions' use of fintech, cybersecurity, and BSA/AML compliance. These are important issues that Congress must continue to monitor.

Requiring annual testimony is a matter of good government and Congress doing its job of overseeing the regulatory agencies that it has created.

I ask all of my colleagues to support this bill.

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