Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time.

Mr. Chairman, I have been a Member of Congress for over 20 years, and I have to say that while this may not be the worst, it is in the top three in terms of the worst bills that I have seen actually progress to the floor of the House.

Anybody who is excited about this bill either has not read it or does not understand it. This bill is a radical rewrite of the securities laws in this country.

As most people who know our history realize, in 1929, when the markets crashed, we established the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, shortly after the crash.

What that did was it created an agency that became the cop on the beat in financial services. They became the protectors of investors.

Since that time in 1934, as courts have interpreted that law that is protecting investors, we built up a body of case law that now makes the United States financial markets the most robust, and they have become the marvel of the world. Everyone comes to the United States for investment because they know that their investment is protected and that they will be treated fairly in the courts because we have well- defined laws.

This bill undoes all of that. This bill is a radical rewriting of the securities laws since 1934. It redefines what a security is. It allows financial companies to escape the cop on the beat. Now, they can leave the jurisdiction of the SEC and go over to the CFTC, which is about six times as small as the SEC.

What will happen here is you will see a migration of companies going out from under the SEC jurisdiction over to the CFTC, and this will cause havoc in our financial markets eventually.

The one amendment I would have liked to see on this bill is that any company that becomes insolvent because of their involvement with crypto cannot receive a taxpayer bailout because that is where this bill is heading. This is going to cause infirmity in the financial institutions in this country as they get commingled with crypto, and eventually, we will be forced into a situation where we are going to have to bail some of these banks out because of their involvement in crypto.

Mr. Chairman, this is a very bad bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote against it.

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