Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may
consume.

What is before us today is a mini omnibus bill that contains,
actually, 11 separate pieces of legislation, some of which may not be
controversial but some of which are incredibly controversial and do not
belong in this legislation. This is not an emergency. We have a new
Congress. This bill should go through the regular order. Unlike the
TRIA bill we just talked about, this bill is a bill which should and
must go through the regular order, and it is absolutely inappropriate
for the suspension calendar.

Our Republican friends would have us believe that this is just some
benign piece of legislation, yet this bill contains not only procedural
problems but substantive problems which have never seen the light of
day in any committee. Some of the legislation has only been public for
about 24 hours, and what is particularly frightening is that the text
of the bill has changed at least three times since Tuesday. We just got
started yesterday in talking about the importance of regular order, and
we are already violating those claims and promises.

Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives should return to regular
order with this piece of legislation, and I urge my colleagues to
reject it. Regular order, whereby legislation is debated at a hearing,
marked up by a committee, and then finally considered by the whole
House, is the process by which we vet legislation. That is not going on
right here and right now, and there is no good reason for it. We do
this to ensure that we fully understand the changing law. Nevertheless,
Republicans have come here to suspend the rules and to consider a
package of 11 bills which will ease the oversight of Wall Street firms,
large banks, multinational corporations, and certain brokers.

It should be pointed out right now that the ranking member of the
House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters, who is unable to be
in Washington due to personal matters she has to address, has issued a
call to reject this piece of legislation for many of the reasons I am
articulating now.

I think it is also important to point out that there are 52 Members
of Congress who were sworn in yesterday and who represent more than 30
million Americans who will have to vote on bills affecting a collateral
firm's pledge, when they borrow money, affecting what information must
be disclosed about certain brokers and financial statements of firms,
without the opportunity to offer changes. This is the absolute
antithesis of regular order, and this bill is not appropriate. We urge
a ``no.''

I would like to talk a little bit about the specific reasons this
bill is bad. Members should know that this is not the identical bill
that came through in the fall. It has very important changes. If you
voted for it last fall, that is no reason to vote for this bill now.

First, the Volcker rule. This bill undercuts an important part of the
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Volcker
rule was intended to prevent deposit-taking banks--banks that use money
insured by the Federal Government, the people's money--from making bets
and using taxpayer-insured funds. The Federal Reserve went out of its
way to try to ease the transition to a safer system, but this bill
would give megabanks an additional 2 years, totaling 5 years, to sell
off certain securities in which they retain ownership rights--5 more
years of risk, 5 more years of massive profit-taking. This provision,
which almost certainly juices the profits of big, megabanks like
Citigroup and JPMorgan, has never been vetted. The public has not even
had a day to review the text. It is wrong that bills that help Wall
Street and multinational corporations get fast-tracked on day 2 of this
Congress while bills that help working families get slowed up for
years, literally.

Just last month, Republicans successfully handed Citigroup and other
megabanks a multibillion-dollar gift by repealing another reform
measure, known as the ``swaps push-out,'' which was intended to prevent
another Great Recession. The repeal of that provision allowed the
megabanks to continue to borrow money from the Federal Reserve lending
window, which is currently at about zero percent interest, to finance
their risky derivatives. Experts have weighed in. Let me read for the
Record the statement by the CEO of Better Markets:

``It's all about the bonus pool,'' said Dennis Kelleher,
president and CEO of Better Markets, a financial reform
nonprofit. ``The attack on the Volcker rule has been nonstop
because proprietary trading is about big-time bets that
result in big-time bonuses. Wall Street has been fighting it
from day one, and they're not going to stop.''

If you believe that there are things in this mini omnibus, or this
megabill, that might be worth your support, understand that this
particular provision has not been vetted anywhere. For that reason
alone they are literally trying to sneak it in, and you should vote
against it.

Also, this particular bill includes three other provisions that
weaken the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
These provisions take away the authority of regulators who are charged
with ensuring that everybody plays by the same rules so that, if at
some point in the future, we find out that our financial system is
threatened, our regulators will be unable to take decisive action to
fix the problems that they can fix today.

After witnessing the effect that one type of derivative--the credit
default swap--had in spreading losses from the subprime mortgage market
around the world, I would like to know why our first order of business
in this Congress is to roll back the financial reforms that this
Congress deliberated on and passed over an 18-month period following
the 2008 financial crisis.

This bill undermines investor protections. It includes three
provisions that have the potential to leave investors worse off than
they are today. As we proclaim small investors and workers and all of
these things, why are we undermining investor protections? In one
instance, the bill exempts individuals who would broker a merger of a
privately owned company to be exempt from SEC regulations. Since this
legislation passed in a previous Congress, the SEC has taken action to
make this unnecessary. However, if we pass this bill today, we will
undermine a few basic investor protections that the SEC has retained.

For example, the SEC determined that bad actors, such as convicted
securities fraudsters, should not be able to take advantage of a carve-
out. However, by voting ``yes,'' you are saying that it is okay for
people convicted of fraud to sell other things, like franchises or the
restaurant down the street. Another provision would allow 75 percent of
all public companies to no longer report their financial statements in
computer readable formats. When everything is online today and when
investors rely on computers to crunch the financials of various
companies, this bill comes across as a huge step backwards.

My colleagues want to address this bill, and I think it is important
that they do. So, at this point, I am going to urge a ``no'' vote.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, last Congress, H.R. 4167 passed. I voted
against it, but it is not the same as the language in title VIII which
is in this bill today, which extends by 2 years the delay we requested,
totaling 5 years. It is not the same legislation. This bill, title
VIII, has not passed before. It is new.

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, this big bill may have some things that are
not bad, but it also contains a bill that delays protection of our
economy and families from Wall Street gambling, and it should be voted
down.

We urge a very strong ``no'' on this bill. Go back, do it right,
follow the process, regular order, and maybe we could make some
progress here.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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