Jobs for America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Rangel for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose H.R. 4, the so-called Jobs for America Act.

Six years ago this week marked the collapse of Lehman Brothers. That bankruptcy on Wall Street quickly spread across our country, bringing small business lending to a halt, causing a devastating number of foreclosures, and pushing far too many of our fellow Americans into personal bankruptcy.

In the wake of this devastation, Democrats in Congress worked diligently to put in place serious and comprehensive safeguards to prevent another collapse. And, today, my Republican colleagues continue their hard work to thwart that effort and roll back meaningful reform.

Indeed, this bill, H.R. 4, places significant additional administrative hurdles on our Federal regulatory agencies, particularly on our independent financial regulators, like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Certain provisions of this bill would impose requirements on our financial regulators to conduct onerous cost-benefit analysis, to submit their rules for review to the Office of Management and Budget, and to delay effectiveness of major rules until Congress enacts an unprecedented joint resolution.

Not only would these provisions limit the independence of our Wall Street sheriffs, it would also tie up their already insufficient resources and put them at even greater risk of litigation for every rule. In fact, this bill would create a constitutional crisis by allowing the ``do-nothing'' Republican Congress to intervene in the actions of our executive branch, which is diligently trying to implement critical portions of the Wall Street Reform Act.

The effect of this legislative effort would be to grind to a halt all meaningful regulation on everything from payday loans to mortgage services to the types of risky trading that caused the 2008 crisis. And, ironically, it would stop JOBS Act implementation dead in its tracks. Worst, this comes at a time when House Republicans want to hold funding for our financial regulators flat, despite their new responsibilities, the increase in the number of entities they oversee, and the growth in the complexity and size of U.S. financial markets.

With our economy still recovering from the $14 trillion financial crisis, we simply cannot, under the guise of so-called ``job creation,'' afford to destroy crucial reforms and hamstring our financial regulators.

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