Helping Expand Lending Practices in Rural Communities Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker and Members, I rise in support of H.R. 2672, the CFPB Rural Designation Petition and Correction Act. I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch) for working with the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr) to introduce this bipartisan legislation.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has recognized the challenges rural communities with limited access to banking services face and are appropriately reconsidering how to designate rural counties.

However, some large counties can have both large urban centers and rolling farmland within their borders, preventing them from being considered rural. This measure would direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to establish an application process so that a lender who lives or does business in a county that does not meet the rural definition can still apply to serve as a rural lender under the CFPB's qualified mortgage rule.

While balloon payments were a feature of many of the risky and predatory loans that ended in financial disaster for American families, there are some specific places and times when they may make sense, especially in rural communities.

I am pleased that this legislation is narrowly tailored to ensure the kinds of institutions that would be allowed to make these loans are truly community banks--small institutions that play an active role in their communities, with personal knowledge of their customers and their needs.

As we have learned from flood insurance reform, applying map-based standards uniformly across the diverse geography of the U.S. is incredibly challenging. This legislation would ensure that in areas that may not fit the standard, but where common sense shows them to be rural, the local community would have input into the process.

I also want to acknowledge the CFPB for acting very quickly in the face of the feedback it received on the rural definition it initially proposed, making certain that credit continued to flow to borrowers by offering a 2-year waiver for all small creditors during the process of re-proposing its rural definition.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I would simply like to ask all of my colleagues to support this important legislation, and I would like to commend Mr. Hinojosa and Mr. Barr, and I would also like to commend Mrs. Capito and all who have worked so well together to ensure that we pay attention to the problems of rural communities, and this bill certainly does that.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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