OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Providing for Congressional Disapproval of Rule Submitted By Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Relating to ``Community Reinvestment Act Regulations''

Floor Speech

Date: June 26, 2020
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Executive Branch Finance and Banking Housing and Property

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Mr. GARCIA of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I thank Chairwoman Waters for this opportunity.

I rise in support of this resolution and join my colleagues in opposition to the Trump administration's new rule that weakens implementation of the Community Reinvestment Act.

It is an outrage that the Trump administration's OCC issued this rule that guts a historic law in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic.

To add insult to injury, former Chairman Otting resigned his post immediately after issuing the rule so that he will avoid cleaning up the fallout from this mess. It is up to Congress to clean it up, and that is what we are seeking to do.

The Community Reinvestment Act was enacted more than 40 years ago and has been one of our most powerful tools against redlining and the perpetration of systemic racism and poverty.

Like so much of our country's history, the story of the CRA runs through Chicago, where a local community organizer in the Austin neighborhood, Gale Cincotta, led the fight against discriminatory housing injustice and earned the nickname ``Mother of the CRA.'' Through her work with her neighborhood association and National People's Action, Cincotta fought against redlining and disinvestment from our communities using some of the innovative and confrontational tactics that we recognize in today's protest movements.

My district is a working-class immigrant district, and Gale Cincotta and organizers like her across the country fought to pass the CRA so that communities like mine would not be left behind by financial institutions.

The OCC's rule allows lenders to count activities that have nothing to do with improving our neighborhoods toward their requirements to serve low- and moderate-income communities, decrease transparency, and make it even harder to hold these institutions accountable. That is why we oppose it.

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