Impact of Insured Depository Institution Failures

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) for his leadership on this topic. He has been very dedicated to finding a solution here. He's worked with both sides of the aisle to find a way to get to the transparency and accountability that we need to have in terms of the examination process with our community banks, and I know he has been a tireless advocate for the communities in his district.

We actually went to Mr. Westmoreland's district, to Newnan, Georgia, and had a legislative hearing, and we learned about the bank closures and the financial examination procedures. Regulators were all there. Financial institutions were there. But I think the one thing that struck me more than anything in the course of the conversation was, when a bank fails--and a lot of times a community bank is the only community bank, local bank, local ownership, know the people down the street. When that bank fails, it really guts the community in a way that's hard to describe.

The larger banks are there; branches are there. But, still, losing that community anchor in a community bank can be a devastating thing, not just for individuals and families but also for the shop owner, the car dealer, the individual farmer, the folks that rely on the relationship banking that you get so spectacularly through a community bank. You lose that and, unfortunately, never to come back again in a lot of cases. I think that he's very concerned about that, and the people of Newnan, Georgia, in that district, are very concerned.

This study I think will help us to see what's really going on here, pull the curtain back, look at the practices and the examination procedures. I know that Senator Levin made some technical changes in this, and I would like to thank Mr. Westmoreland for working with the Senator.

Now, maybe that should be a life lesson for us here in terms of what's going on today, but I think we've reached a good consensus and a good agreement. We will hear the results of this study in our subcommittee and in our full committee to find out if we need to work with the regulators to change the regulations, make it so that what the banking institutions are hearing on the ground from their regulators is actually what is moving forward in their written reports that are sent to Washington, et cetera, et cetera.

One of the things that we are challenged with here in Congress certainly is creating jobs and creating a climate where banks are going to lend and creating a regulatory climate where banks are going to lend and want to lend to small businesses. This issue that Mr. Westmoreland has highlighted I think will help us with that and, hopefully, will undo some of the needless shackles that some of our examiners are placing on our smaller institutions or on our community banks to be able to get back lending, and then our small businesses and job creators can then get back to the business of creating jobs so we can grow our economy.

I would like to again thank everybody for their efforts, and I look forward to the passage of this bill.

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