Holding Company Registration Threshold Equalization Act of 2015
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WOMACK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the manager of this legislation for the time. I would like to also thank Chairman Hensarling and the entire Financial Services Committee for, yet again, ensuring that this bill, the Holding Company Registration Threshold Equalization Act, is put in front of the full House and sent on to the Senate.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Representative Himes, Representative Wagner, and Representative Delaney, for their continued efforts to codify this necessary JOBS Act clarification.
Mr. Speaker, this is the third time that I have come to the floor to speak on this truly bipartisan bill, and it is unfortunate that we are still without a successful resolution to the problem because we can all agree that small community banks and savings and loan holding companies were not the cause of the financial crisis. They shouldn't be treated as if they were.
That is exactly why the House and Senate eliminated some of the unnecessary burdens placed on our small lenders by passing the JOBS Act in the 112th Congress. However, the JOBS Act, which raised the registration threshold and decreased deregistration threshold for bank holding companies, unfortunately didn't explicitly do so for savings and loan holding companies as well. Mr. Speaker, this was an oversight.
Thanks to the oversight, savings and loan holding companies are still having to spend their resources to comply with regulations intended for larger banks, instead of sharing the same ability bank and bank holding companies have been granted to focus on serving the lending needs of their communities.
A cosponsor of the JOBS Act, I can say with absolute certainty that excluding savings and loan holding companies was not our intent. H.R. 1334 would correct this oversight and would simply ensure that savings and loan holding companies are treated in the same manner as bank and bank holding companies, something my colleagues confidently affirmed when this bill passed in the 113th Congress 417-4.
Mr. Speaker, they say the third time is the charm. I am hopeful that, with the Senate's newfound leadership, we will finally get this bill where it needs to be, on the President's desk.
I urge my colleagues to help me get it there by supporting the passage of H.R. 1334.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source