Conference Report on H.R. 4173, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. I thank the chairman for yielding, and I congratulate the chairman for the extraordinary work he has done. I thank Mr. Bachus too, who is, I think, one of the really responsible leaders in the minority in terms of issues of substance. And when there are differences, they are honest differences.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor, and when I do, I hear portions of the debate, sometimes not all of the debate. I want to make an observation, though. I listened to the gentleman from New Jersey, and he remarked on what the people were saying. And I think that, frankly, his remarks reflected the difference in the perspective between the two parties.

Indeed, that perspective has been reflected in my three decades here, under Mr. Reagan and others who have served as President and lastly with Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama's immediate predecessor. And that perspective was, if the regulators would simply get out of the way, things would be fine. Mr. Royce indicates that the market will take care of things. ``The market will discipline itself,'' he said. Phil Gramm said that with respect to the derivatives.

Unfortunately, I voted for that bill that Mr. Gramm was for. I made a mistake. Brooksley Born was correct. The market did not discipline itself. In fact, the market took extraordinarily irresponsible steps. What I hear, I tell my friend from New Jersey, the people saying is, Don't let the big guys trample on us. Don't let the big guys put us at great risk. Don't let the big guys make decisions that they take the risk and we take the loss. That's what I hear the people saying, and that's what I think this bill is designed to respond to.

This week Mr. Boehner compared reforming Wall Street to killing an ant with a nuclear weapon. Well, that may sound colorful, but this is the greatest economic crisis that any of us--I'm looking around on this floor--have experienced in our lifetimes. And I am closer to experiencing the last one than any of you, I think, on the floor are. But none of us, even at my advanced age, were alive during the Great Depression. So this is the first time that we have experienced such a deep, deep recession.

But I will tell you, the 8 million Americans whose jobs it took away think it was a mighty big ant that squashed them and their families, or the millions more who saw their savings devastated or the families in every one of our districts who have lost their homes. They're thinking to themselves, Mr. Boehner, that was a mighty big ant that came my way. And not to more than half of the Nation's working adults who report that they have been pushed by the recession into ``unemployment, pay cuts, reduced hours at work or part-time jobs,'' according to a Pew Research Center Survey reported in today's Washington Post.

Now, some of you may think that was an ant that walked through here, but some think it was a pretty big elephant. It squashed them and hurt them.

I don't mean an elephant in the symbol of your party, a respected animal with a long memory.

But we have differences, and the differences are, as I've said before, that you perceive regulation as harmful.

My analogy is, if you take the referee off the football field, I guarantee the split end's going to leave early. He's going to try to get an advantage. And I guarantee the little guys on the field are going to get trampled on by the big guys because there's no referee to say, Time out. You broke the rules.

This bill is about putting the referee back on the field and saying, Obey the rules. Do not trample on the little people. Don't take risks that you will expect them to pay for.

More than half, Mr. Speaker, of today's families have been affected. There is no way to overstate what happened to them, and there is no mistaking the cause of the crisis: The Wall Street culture of reckless gambling, and a culture of regulatory neglect that the last administration wants to perpetuate it, and some want to return to.

I simply think that would be a mistake. I tell my friend from New Jersey, the people I talk to think it would be a mistake as well. They don't like what's happened. They don't want it to happen again, and this is an effort to make sure that's the case.

Never again. Never again should Wall Street greed bring such suffering to our country. And never again should Washington stand by as that greed manifests itself as irresponsible risk taking where a few share the profits, but Main Street bears the brunt of Wall Street's lost bets.

Now, let me say that I voted for that bill--I was wrong--the Gramm bill that said Brooksley Born was wrong, we didn't need to regulate derivatives. And by the way, there were a number of Democrat leaders who said that as well, that we didn't need to, and Mr. Greenspan said it as well. He's admitted he made a mistake, and he was distressed by that mistake.

Now, we can't erase that crisis, but we can work to rebuild what we lost. As Democrats have done every time, we've supported job creation, from the Recovery Act to ``Cash for Clunkers'' to the HIRE Act to the additional tax relief for small businesses, that's, frankly, been obstructed by the minority party in the other body who have made a high-stakes political bet on recovery's failure. That would be a shame.

We can also, just as any responsible family would, ensure ourselves against a repeat crisis and protect America's jobs from another devastating collapse. The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Mr. Frank and Mr. Dodd have led to this point, means an end to the irresponsible practices of the big banks.

And I want to say the community banks, which I think Mr. Royce referred to, he's absolutely right. They were not the problem, none of our community banks. They, frankly, cared that people could pay their money back, and they were careful in giving loans and careful in making sure that people to whom they gave loans could pay them back.

It was those who securitized them, that put them in these big, fancy documents, that didn't care whether they could pay them back because, for the most part, they made their money on the transaction, not on the long-term responsibility of the debtor.

I'm happy that among our financial institutions there are responsible actors who appreciate effective oversight and understand that it stimulates investment, enterprise, entrepreneurship, and job creation. Why? Because people can trust the system because they know the referee is on the field watching, and they know, therefore, the game will be honest.

No bill, of course, can create an economy without risk, nor should it. But this bill will bring accountability to Wall Street and Washington, protect and empower consumers, forestall future financial meltdowns, and prevent taxpayer money from being put on the line again to bail out Wall Street excess.

I want to say to my friend who mentioned that we bailed out Wall Street, how quickly you forget that it was President Bush and Secretary Paulson and Ben Bernanke, appointed as Chair of the Federal Reserve by President Bush, that asked for that bill; and that your leadership, for the most part, supported and urged its adoption. So, with all due respect, it was President Bush's administration that asked for that bailout, not Democrats.

What Democrats did, when they said there was a crisis, acted in a bipartisan way to respond to that crisis. And, very frankly, I think we precluded a depression.

Americans have an obligation of responsible borrowing, but financial companies also have responsibilities to make loans fair and transparent. By creating a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we can make sure that both sides live up to that bargain.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will strengthen and modernize oversight of Wall Street by putting the functions of seven different agencies in one accountable place. It seems to me that that would appeal to people who want not so much proliferation of various agencies crossing one another.

In addition, corporations like AIG and Lehman Brothers will no longer be able to make the kind of gambles that risk the health of our entire economy and, indeed, the world's. Institutions that place the biggest economic bets will be required to keep capital on hand to meet their obligations, should those bets fail, and not expect the taxpayer to do that.

This bill also reduces the conflicts of interest that allowed credit rating agencies to wrongfully declare such institutions in good health long after they were dangerously overloaded. Of course, the regulators weren't watching. There was a philosophy, of course, that regulation got in the way.

And it prudently regulates the inherently dangerous derivatives that Warren Buffett called, and I quote, ``weapons of financial mass destruction'' for the ability to bring down entire economies when bets go bad.

Should a major firm still find itself on the verge of collapse, this bill insulates the rest of the economy and keeps taxpayers off the hook, off the hook for any future bailouts.

Mr. Speaker, a tremendous amount of irresponsibility in Washington and on Wall Street went into the crisis from which we are still struggling to recover. That crisis, of course, started in December 2007. Actually, it started long before that, as I said, in the late nineties. Middle class families who worked hard and played by the rules overwhelmingly paid the price.

But there's a kind of irresponsibility even worse, failure to learn. We know what greed and neglect can do. None of us can plead ignorance.

Let's show, Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of this House, that we've learned something from the crisis. Let's keep it from happening again. That is, I tell my friend, what I hear from my constituents. They want to have us stop it from happening again. They're angry about it. I'm angry about it. I'm sure that the ladies and gentlemen on both sides of the aisle are angry about it. This is an opportunity to ensure, to the extent we possibly can, that this tragedy to so many millions of families does not happen again.

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Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for his question.

As I said at the outset, I do believe we come from a different place. And I do believe it is accurate to state that all of the Republican Presidents who have served during the time that I have served have advanced the proposition that regulation at the Federal level was overburdensome and it ought to be reduced.

Certainly, we ought to reduce regulation that is neither effective and is intrusive to the growth of our economy and to the effective operation of businesses. But with respect to that, I say to my friend, I think what we saw during the last decade was an excessive commitment, as Mr. Greenspan pointed out, to the proposition, as Mr. Royce stated, Just get out of the way; they will discipline themselves.

Frankly, the split end that leaves 2 seconds early because the referee is not on the field is not a bad person. He is trying to get an advantage. And that's the difference I think between our perspectives. I understand that difference of the perspectives, so I agree with you that we do have a difference in perspective. I believe this strikes the right balance.

And I yield to my friend the chairman.

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