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Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) delivered the following remarks at this morning’s House Republican leadership press conference to discuss the committee’s bipartisan regulatory relief bills as part of “Financial Independence Week” in the House of Representatives:
Well no day quite like tax day to focus one’s attention on the lack of financial independence. The American dream for so many low and moderate income Americans is that one day they can achieve financial independence. But, regrettably, over the last six years, middle income paychecks have remained flat or have actually been slightly lower; we know that middle income bank accounts are a lot lower. Part of the problem, frankly, has been the Dodd-Frank Act.
After its passage the big banks have gotten bigger, the small banks have gotten fewer, the taxpayer has become poorer. The House Financial Services Committee that I have the responsibility of leading recently marked up 11 different bills – all of which passed on a bipartisan basis – that would provide modest clarifications to that act to help empower lower and moderate income Americans to perhaps buy that first home, in one case a manufactured house, in other cases to get a slight break on their closing costs in what we call points and fees.
But the big contest we have now is that the left hand doesn’t always know what the far left hand is doing. And notwithstanding the fact that these bills passed on a bipartisan basis, some believe that Dodd-Frank was chiseled in stone, that it came down from Mount Sinai, that it’s a matter of ideology. But we have struggling constituents who want to own that first home, who want a break on their closing costs.
I’m hopeful that as these bills have come out of committee – we had six of them on suspension yesterday, we’ll have two of them on the floor today – that all Democrats will agree with Barney Frank himself, who believes that his law was not sacrosanct. He’s indicated at least a half a dozen areas where this law can be amended.
We hope that this is not a triumph of ideology over the plight of low and moderate income Americans who richly deserve help on their road to financial independence.