Patrick McHenryChairman

Washington, January 8, 2015 - House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) today made the following comments about the Senate’s passage of House legislation to reauthorize the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act with reforms and the failure of an amendment offered by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to remove an important bipartisan Dodd-Frank Act clarification from the bill.

“This very same TRIA bill could have and should have passed the Senate last month.  The only reason TRIA expired is because the then-do nothing Democrat Senate leadership failed to even bring this bipartisan bill up for a vote.  Thankfully, now that the Senate is under new management, the days of such pointlessly partisan obstruction and gridlock are over.
 
“Still there are some who are so blindly, rigidly ideological that they will try to obstruct even the most modest, reasonable and overwhelmingly bipartisan clarification to Dodd-Frank.  Certain Democrats seem to think they have the moral authority to cripple Main Street in order to occupy Wall Street.  Washington ‘solutions’ like Dodd-Frank that enshrine bailouts into law have rigged the system against hardworking taxpayers.
 
“The truth is Dodd-Frank was not chiseled in stone; nobody brought it down to us from Mount Sinai.  Congress would be negligent in its duties if we did not continually monitor and fix Dodd-Frank’s unintended consequences.  One of these unintended consequences that’s harming our Main Street economy is the mistake that requires burdensome Dodd-Frank regulations intended for Wall Street to apply to farmers, ranchers and small businesses.  Even Barney Frank and Chris Dodd said this was a mistake.  Even Ranking Member Maxine Waters said this is a mistake, and that’s why she and an overwhelming number of House Democrats have now voted at least three times to correct it.  No farmer, rancher or small business caused the financial crisis.  Why should they be held hostage by Washington politicians seeking to preserve a misguided provision that has been disavowed by the same Democratic Members of Congress who wrote it?
 
“The sheer weight, volume, complexity and load of Dodd-Frank regulations may have been aimed at Wall Street, but they hit Main Street, and working men and woman across our country are collateral damage.  Congress needs to abandon political games like those we saw in the Senate today and instead join together in doing the hard work of strengthening our economy for the American people.”