Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, this is a study in unintended consequences.
This body determined that they wanted to have more oversight over people that are called broker-dealers of investment funds. They would be handled the exact same way as investment advisers that handle high-end, large investments from wealthy individuals across the country. So the two are trying to be merged together. The Department of Labor and SEC are both trying to come up with their own version of a set of rules.
Here is the unintended consequence that is coming at America: those folks on the lower end and the middle end of America are about to lose a lot of people that helped them with investment advisers.
Here is how it works:
Say you have a newlywed couple, just out of school, just getting started, making $26,000 a year combined, as a couple, and determine they are going to do the responsible thing. They are also going to open up a retirement account and get started thinking about decades from now. We encourage that couple to start thinking about their retirement.
Would that couple making $26,000 a year, with what they are going to put into retirement--$15 a month, maybe--are they going to be attractive to an investment dealer? No, they are not going to be attracted to them. It is a very small amount; $15, $20. But one of these broker-dealers, that is what they love to do. They sign up couples just like that.
The rules coming down from Dodd-Frank will put a new set of standards on those individuals that are providing retirement investment opportunities for people at the very beginning of their investment time. This hits exactly the wrong people, and the benevolent thoughts at the beginning are now coming down to unintended consequences across our country that there will actually be a disincentive to provide retirement vehicles for those with lower and middle income.
The middle-income Americans should have every incentive and every opportunity to save. This simply says to the SEC they cannot promulgate that rule. They need to set it aside and keep the same standards that are already in place. This is not an unregulated industry. They are a heavily regulated industry already.
Keep the same standards in place, and do not discourage investments for retirement from going into lower- and middle-income Americans.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would just close by saying the 2008 financial meltdown was not caused because middle-income Americans didn't have access to retirement funds.
This is a way to be able to protect middle-income Americans, protect their retirement, and to encourage them to save in the future, not decreasing the number of options they have out there. I would like to have lots of folks out there encouraging lots of Americans to be able to save in not just the largest investment dealers in the country, trying to go after the largest, highest-income Americans. So this is something that we should support to maintain the regulations that are already in place and not decrease the options for Americans.
I yield back the balance my time.
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