Member Corner

Wall Street Journal:  Regulators have created a mortgage minefield Incompatible and contradictory federal regulations -- including those in Dodd-Frank -- have created a mortgage minefield.  The ultimate casualties will be the nascent housing recovery and the American home buyer.  AEI: Overzealous intervention dooms the market Those who want government guarantees… Read more »

Just one full day of committee activity for this week before the July 4th District Work Period. But be sure to check back here on the Bottom Line Blog -- and subscribe to our email lists  --  for updates throughout the week. Here's what's happening:  On Wednesday at 10 a.m. the full committee examines how Dodd-Frank could result in more taxpayer-funded… Read more »

  Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry delivers this week's Sunday Video Message. He discusses what we learned about the CFPB in this week's Financial Institutions and Oversight hearings.  Read more »

On Tuesday, Members of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee examined the budget for the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB) with the bureau's Chief Financial Officer. While the CFPB generally lacks oversight and accountability, one particular issue of concern raised at the hearing was the outrageously expensive planned renovation of the bureau's Washington… Read more »

Congressman Bill Huizenga joined us to talk about H.R. 1135, the Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act. The bill repeals Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act that requires all publicly traded companies to calculate and disclose the median annual total compensation of all employees and compare that number to the annual total compensation of the CEO in each SEC filing. While that… Read more »

Congressman Robert Hurt introduced two of the bills we considered in today's markup: H.R. 1564, the Audit Integrity and Job Protection Act and H.R. 1105, the Small Business Capital Access and Job Preservation Act. Both were reported favorably by the committee with bipartisan support.    The first bill, H.R. 1564, prohibits the Public Company Accounting… Read more »

Two subcommittee hearings and a full committee markup make for a slightly lighter week than last. Be sure to check back here on the Bottom Line Blog -- and subscribe to our email lists  --  for updates throughout the week. Here’s what’s happening: On Tuesday -- as Rep. Capito previewed in our Sunday Video Message -- the Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit… Read more »

Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit Subcommittee Chairman Shelley Moore Capito delivers this week's Sunday Video Message, the first in our new series. In the video, Rep. Capito previews next week's hearing on the Dodd-Frank Act's negative impact on homeownership.  Read more »

Fortune: The Fed's other trillion dollar problem The amount of money banks have at the Fed recently reached 13 digits, for the first time ever. Bloomberg: New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time Although no two business cycles are alike, most share some common characteristics. The interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy -- housing and manufacturing -- tend to… Read more »

A survey of housing finance in other countries sheds light on the distortion that government subsidies for housing can cause in national economies. Professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business have pointed out that one thing that Spain and the United States have in common is a “massive misallocation of their economy’s resources to construction. The oversupply is… Read more »