Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, before I begin my remarks, I must correct the gentleman from Michigan when he talked about our unwillingness to look at Dodd-Frank in any critical way and our unwillingness to modify, amend, or do anything to Dodd-Frank. It is absolutely not true.
As a matter of fact, I am recorded time and time again--even in my speech before the Chamber of Commerce, where I have said and I have acted in this manner and in this fashion--that where there were complications, I was willing to work with the opposite side of the aisle to try to deal with those complications so that everybody would understand what was intended. Where there appeared to be conflicts, I would work to undo those conflicts.
I have no problem with changing or modifying or dealing with problems in Dodd-Frank, and I have acted that way time and time again.
Today, I rise to express my disappointment with a Republican Party that has politicized consensus legislation that would provide real, tangible regulatory relief.
When we began this Congress, Democrats on the House
Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee both agreed to support technical fixes to the Dodd-Frank Act that have broad bipartisan support.
In that spirit, the gentlewoman from New York, Representative Carolyn McCarthy, who is on this floor this evening, worked hard, provided leadership, helped to straighten out any confusion, and worked with both sides of the aisle to come together in a consensus around the legislation that we are going to hear so much about.
I worked with Mrs. McCarthy. I worked with both sides of the aisle also. We came up with targeted, bipartisan insurance capital standards, and we fixed it, and our hard work paid off.
After months of holding hearings and building consensus, we delivered to our chairman a bill with no opposition. Democrats and Republicans supported the measure, as did outside experts on financial reform and the financial services industry.
It was a bill that unanimously passed the Senate, a bill that represented the kind of work Congress should be doing. In other words, Mr. Speaker, virtually no one opposed these reasonable changes to insurance capital standards; but, instead of passing the measure, this noncontroversial technical change has been ``repackaged'' into a broader and more controversial bill by attaching provisions that make substantive changes to Dodd-Frank that, unlike the insurance capital standards fix, are nontechnical in nature and are not universally supported.
The reality is, by circumventing and politicizing the process, this commonsense legislation is going nowhere in the United States Senate. Countless Senate Democrats have made clear that any changes to Dodd-Frank must be targeted and have overwhelming bipartisan support; and Republicans, like Senator Collins, whose contributions to the Dodd-Frank Act we are fixing today, are opposed to it as well.
Her statement was unequivocal, saying, ``I would hate for a bill, after many months to have achieved consensus, to get bogged down in unrelated issues.'' She went on to say, ``This isn't reopening a major issue in Dodd-Frank. It is simply bringing clarity to a provision that I authored that the Fed has misinterpreted. I think, given how closely we've worked with everyone, it really is more of a technical correction.''
Senator Johanns, another author of the ``clean'' Senate bill, also wants to see an up-or-down vote on the House side; and he said, ``My hope is that we can do this in a straightforward way and get it done.'' He went on to say, if changes were made to the bill, he has to ``start all over.''
Mr. Speaker, this Congress has been infamous for its inability to get anything done; but, on this one issue, we have managed to get the policy right and get incredibly broad support. We have a clear path to getting something done; but, unfortunately, the chairman has decided to throw a wrench in the works at the last minute for no reason.
Finally, it is clear that this is an exercise in political theater. It is well-known and widely reported that Republican leadership has privately told insurance industry stakeholders that they would bring up a ``clean'' insurance capital standards bill after the midterm elections.
It simply shows the disgraceful nature of this debate and the partisan, dilatory tactics that create more distrust in the political process. Rather than do what is right and enact legislation that everyone has agreed on, the chairman has decided to create a fight where there was none.
Make no mistake, but for the chairman's intransigence, the insurance capital fix bill could be on the President's desk for a signature tomorrow.
I oppose this bill due to the particularly flagrant affront to bipartisan efforts to fix narrow issues in the Wall Street Reform Act, an important and complex bill.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker and Members, I think the argument that we had a piece of legislation here authored by Mrs. McCarthy and Mr. Miller that truly had bipartisan support, that had been worked on so long and so hard by the gentlewoman from New York, that could have passed, and it should have, not been placed in this controversial position. This bill should have been a clean bill that was put forth in a way that would allow the Senate to support it, and to place it--well, the Senate--we would put this on the President's desk if, in fact, we just passed this bill out as a clean bill. It is quite unfortunate.
My colleagues can say all that they want to say about jobs and creating jobs. They talked about bills that had been supported in the committee and bills that had even been supported on the floor. Why are you bringing them back again? Why are you repackaging them? Why are you taking bills that you are identifying as having had all this great support and passed off the floor, passed out of committee, why are you repackaging them? I will tell you why you are repackaging them: because you are trying to create this picture that somehow you have this great jobs bill, that somehow you have worked in some extraordinary ways to put together, despite the fact that you are just repackaging bills that, as you said, had support.
The gentleman from Michigan said he is confused. Yes, I think you are, and I think you are confusing others, and that is my point. My point is it doesn't matter whether or not we have bills that were jointly supported or passed out of committee or passed off the floor. This process and this procedure that you are employing is one that is not fair to the Members of this House.
You are putting forth a process that is complex, that is not easily understood, and now the Members who come to the floor, if they have to take a vote, are going to try to decide did I support that or didn't I support that.
I think that the way that you are doing this is somewhat dangerous; and I can just envision that for the future that we may have a situation where you will hold all of the bills that perhaps do not have bipartisan support, and again you will package them with maybe one bill, as you are doing with this one, with support, and we will never have an opportunity to have the kind of debate and amendments that we should have.
It is about process. It is about procedure. It is about making sure the American people understand what we are doing and how we are doing it. It is not about being slick. It is not about being cute. It is not about trying to take the process and package it in such a way that you can get what you want with a big title of jobs to make people think you have done something new, creative, and extraordinary.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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