Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Usually, we tell that saying to children to encourage them to achieve greater things, but it seems that when it comes to Congress, it is what Wall Street keeps telling House Republicans.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans thought they could sneak this bill by last week through a fast-track process on the House floor, a process with limited debate and no opportunity for amendments. They thought they could ram through this gift to a handful of the biggest Wall Street banks on just the 2nd day of this new Congress right after we had reconvened.

Well, the American people were watching, and the Democrats here in the House told them ``no.'' The Republican bill failed. Now, here they are; they are at it again. Now, H.R. 37 is back on the floor again, without the opportunity to amend it and with limited debate.

The only difference is that Republicans have reduced how many votes are needed to guarantee passage. That's right. Rather than fix the bill to win broad support, Republicans just changed the rule to make sure the tainted bill passes.

And what does this bill do? Well, for one, it takes a part of Wall Street reform's Volcker rule and delays it for yet another 2 years. Remember that the Volcker rule is the part of Dodd-Frank that stops government-supported banks from gambling with bank depositors' money. And this extra 2-year delay comes on top of a 3-year delay that our regulators carefully crafted to ease the megabanks' transition.

This particular part of the law that Republicans want to see delayed applies to what are known as collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs. CLOs are bundles of leveraged loans, loans often issued by private equity firms to facilitate corporate buyouts that can harm American jobs. The loans are sliced and diced into packages and sold off to investors, including banks that hold customers' deposits. The packages often also contain credit default swaps or other derivatives that can make the position even riskier.

Somehow, Wall Street bankers--the supposedly smartest people in the room--can't seem to comply with a law passed in 2010 by--that's right--2017. Seven long years isn't enough. The Republicans and the banks want nearly a decade.

In addition to that, the Republican bill wouldn't just let the banks hold on to these CLOs. The bill would let the banks accumulate new CLOs also. That's right. The banks could actively trade in and out of these investments, unlike the rules carefully crafted by the Federal Reserve.

We saw the Republican playbook at the end of last year with the so-called swaps push-out rule. They hope they can jam these bills through Congress by attaching them to must-pass legislation. And most of all, they hope these issues are way too complicated or too technical for the American people to understand or care about. But the American people really do understand. They remember how our economy was nearly brought to its knees in 2008, and they recognize that we can't let Wall Street slowly chip away at reforms designed to prevent that kind of large-scale financial crisis from happening again.

And President Obama gets it, too. That is why the White House said he would veto this legislation if it got to his desk. And so one cannot help but wonder why are we here on the floor after 8 o'clock in the evening with an attempt to push through something that was jammed into a package of bills? Many of those bills had been heard either in committee or on the floor, but one portion of this bill had not. And so is this simply an attempt to ram down one segment that they fear real debate on, ram it down the throats of the Members of this Legislature and the citizens of this country, hiding it in this package, hoping that we won't get it?

What is worse is that this legislation has been brought to the floor without regard for any regular order. The nine new members on the Financial Services Committee will not get a chance to hear testimony on it at all. And in just the 2nd week of their term, 52 new Members of the House are expected to vote on it, having complicated deregulation shoved down their throats. Democrats offered 13 amendments, one of them bipartisan, but none of these amendments will be considered or debated. Why? Because my colleagues on the other side are not interested in legislation but, rather, in political theater.

We cannot let this casual disregard for the legislative process stand. We want to see reforms sensibly implemented. We want to work with regulators to get the rules right, and we want our largest banks to stop gambling and go back to facilitating growth in the real economy. But that is difficult to do when my Republican counterparts continue pushing legislation that masquerades as technical fixes but really makes substantive changes to the Dodd-Frank reform law. And then they package completely reckless legislation with other provisions that are either necessary or sensible.

Democrats know better, President Obama knows better, and the American people know better. So I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There are so many inaccuracies in some of the testimony that I am hearing from the opposite side of the aisle that I don't know where to start to try to clear up some of the points that they are attempting to make.

First of all, let me start with this business about how community banks are going to be hurt. This is simply an attempt to hide behind community banks and scare the Members of this body into believing that if they don't support this bill, that somehow their community banks are going to suffer.

The FDIC said that 95 percent of CLOs owned by banks are owned by those with more than $50 billion in assets, with the preponderance owned by Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

Specifically, JPMorgan Chase has $33.5 billion worth of CLOs; Wells Fargo has $24.1 billion worth of CLOs; and Citi has $4.7 billion worth of CLOs.

So what are we talking about when we use this kind of messaging to claim that somehow we are going to hurt these small banks? That is absolutely not true. And I want to tell you, the community banks have not been in the background putting out tremendous sums of money on this lobbying effort. According to The New York Times:

The current efforts to undermine Dodd-Frank have been textbook lobbying. In the first three quarters of last year, the securities and investment industry spent nearly $74 million on lobbying on 704 registered lobbyists.

So get this picture. We keep seeing attempts by any means necessary from the opposite side of the aisle to push controversial legislation into packaged bills, some of those bills having been supported either in committee or on the floor. It is not enough that they lost when they put this on the suspension calendar. They have come back with a rule that does not allow for any debate, and they are determined to win this by majority vote, even in the face of a veto. Who are they trying to protect?

If it is true that 95 percent of the CLOs owned by banks are owned by those with more than $50 billion in assets, and I told you who has a preponderance, then that is who is being protected. It is the biggest banks in America--Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. That is who is being protected. This money I am talking about, $74 million on lobbying 704 lobbyists, these are the big banks spending the money lobbying on this legislation.

And so this business about protecting Main Street, about protecting the small businesses, simply attempts to misguide and mislead, knowing that most folks really don't understand the CLO market, that this legislation, along with many other pieces of legislation, are complicated. Dodd-Frank is an attempt to reform what had gone terribly wrong in this country. We have seen attempt after attempt, probably more than 100 attempts in the Financial Services Committee, to try and undermine Dodd-Frank, to get rid of Dodd-Frank, to break it up piece by piece, and again by any means necessary.

And so if you can answer why all these attempts, why all of this money is being spent, why we're protecting just these three big banks in America, then you can see that this is not about Main Street, this is not about small businesses. This is now about relationships between too many Members of this House and of this Congress with the biggest banks in America, who are determined to destroy Dodd-Frank. And they have tried all of these tactics and they have tried somehow to make people believe that we don't care about this fire sale that we are going to cause the big banks.

Well, let me just say this. No, I don't worry about causing a fire sale of the big banks. I am not here to protect the big banks. I am truly here to protect Main Street and small business entrepreneurs and business people in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk further about title VIII and how it does not benefit small businesses. CLOs comprised only of actual loans are exempt from the Volcker rule entirely. We are only talking about CLOs that contain other instruments like credit default swaps, interest rate swaps, commercial paper-backed securities, et cetera.

The Volcker rule will have a minimum impact on the CLO market. Nothing in the rule says that other buyers of CLOs need to stop their purchases. Nonbanks like hedge funds or insurance companies can continue to purchase or trade CLOs. The restriction only affects banks, big banks, which have tremendous access to taxpayer subsidies through the FDIC and the Federal Reserve borrowing window.

Various Wall Street research analysts have said that the market ``shrugged off'' the Volcker rule and that the industry can do just fine moving forward. In fact, 2014 saw record issuances for new, Volcker-compliant CLOs.

Banks will have 5 years, including 3 years worth of extensions, to comply with this provision. The Republicans now want to give them 7 years. Our position is this: enough is enough. Eventually the Volcker rule has to become operational or else Dodd-Frank becomes meaningless.

These CLOs are typically leverage loans. It should buy private equity firms to facilitate corporate buyouts of large companies. This is more about facilitating private equity than helping Main Street businesses.

For example, leverage buyouts are when a private equity firm pays for a controlling interest in a company by taking out a loan against that company, saddling the company with debt. The aim is to reduce costs, often by firing workers and slashing employee pay and benefits in order to quickly resell the leaner company for a profit. So this isn't about job creation; this is about job destruction.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Despite what my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle have said, this package of bills does not simply constitute a technical set of changes to Dodd-Frank or to our securities laws. In fact, these changes are substantive and the package is widely opposed.

My friends on the opposite side of the aisle keep talking about they are protecting Main Street, but let me recite for you what Main Street is saying about this bill. Let me read for you some highlights of the opposition letters we have received in addition to opposition from President Obama, Secretary Lew, and former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker himself.

Main Street is represented by, number one, Americans for Financial Reform. Americans for Financial Reform says that H.R. 37 ``includes numerous changes that could have significant negative impacts on regulators' ability to police the financial markets, so that they function safely and transparently.''

They go on to oppose title VII of this bill, citing a Wall Street Journal article outlining how regulators are increasingly warning banks about the looser underwriting standard for leverage loans.

Further, representing Main Street, the AFL-CIO says of H.R. 37, that they oppose the bill because it ``would loosen key Dodd-Frank protections wisely put in place after the 2008 financial collapse.''

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights notes about H.R. 37: ``One lesson of the financial crisis is that deregulation in areas that appear technical and arcane can have significant impacts on the financial system and, thus, on the well-being of ordinary families, particularly in the communities we represent.''

Finally, Public Citizen noted about H.R. 37 that we should not provide more CLO relief because ``the largest banks dominate ownership,'' as I demonstrated a moment ago, ``of CLOs.''

Mr. Speaker, I think we should heed the warning of Main Street, the warning of these groups who truly represent Main Street.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

There has been a lot of talk about bipartisan support or lack of. There have been a lot of talks about how the Republicans have been able to get Democratic votes and that, somehow, we should be happy, we should be satisfied, and that they really don't understand why it is that we are opposing not only the bill, but the tactics that have been used in several attempts to pass legislation with controversial bills tucked into the big package.

Let me give you a summary of amendments that Republicans refuse to consider as we have attempted to work with them.

Mr. Ellison and Mr. Issa offered a bipartisan amendment to strike title VII of the bill, so that all public companies will have to report their financial statements in a computer-readable format. Mr. Sherman and Ms. KUSTER both offered amendments striking the CLO title.

In a similar vein, because Republicans refuse to hold debate on the CLO title, Mr. Kildee and Mr. Capuano offered an amendment to require the regulators to first determine that such a delay was, indeed, in the public interest.

Mr. Lynch also proposed to revise the delay from 2019 to a date we previously considered and approved in the House, 2017. This revised date is one that we had thoroughly considered in the House. We never considered in the House an extension for 2 more years to 2019.

In an effort to prevent the spread of systemic threats, Mr. Lynch proposed that an affiliate of a financial institution, whose failure could pose a systemic risk to our economy, should be required to clear its derivatives.

Mr. Lynch raised a concern that companies, like GE Capital, might be able to take large bets in one part of their company, but receive relief from rules intended to mitigate those risks in another. Mr. Lynch also offered three amendments on title XI, all intended to ensure that employees understand their compensation.

Elsewhere in the bill, Mr. Capuano offered an amendment to title X, requiring companies to disclose political campaign contributions. In the same title, Mr. Ellison required the SEC to finalize its Dodd-Frank rules related to executive compensation data within 60 days.

Mr. Grijalva proposed an amendment to restore the swaps push-out provision that Republicans eliminated by attaching it to the CR/Omnibus last month. Mr. Ellison and Mr. Grijalva also proposed a substitute amendment to focus this Congress on something that would help our economy, ending budget sequestration.

Finally, I propose that we find a way to pay for part of the budget of the cash-strapped SEC by imposing a user fee on investment advisers. This is a commonsense proposal that has been supported by investment advisers, investment advocates, former Republican Chairman Spencer Bachus, SEC Chair White, and the State securities regulators.

Despite the fact that the SEC can only examine an adviser on average once a decade, our committee didn't even consider this issue last Congress.

That is an effort, Mr. Speaker and Members, to show that we have attempted to work with the opposite side of the aisle. We have attempted to offer commonsense amendments that have been absolutely rejected without any consideration being given to them.

We find ourselves here on the floor at 9 this evening, attempting to debate a bill that is going nowhere, that has been issued by the President, a veto message. We are here debating again about whether or not we are putting our taxpayers and Main Street and our small businesses at risk, going back to some of the same tactics, some of the same ways that were used by the banks that brought us to the point of a recession, almost a depression.

Somehow in this short period of time, we have forgotten what happened in 2008, we have forgotten about how many businesses were destroyed, small businesses were destroyed, we have forgotten how many elderly folks lost money in their 401(k)'s, we have forgotten how many homes were foreclosed on, we have forgotten about how we brought this country to the brink of a disaster.

And so let me just say that Dodd-Frank is an attempt for reform. And it is not even a tough reform. As a matter of fact, many of us consider it rather mild. But we have on this side of the aisle been fighting day in and day out in our committee to try and just see the implementation of Dodd-Frank rather than the destruction of an attempt to reform an industry that caused great harm to this society.

And so with that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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