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WASHINGTON – Below are excerpts from the prepared remarks Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) will deliver Tuesday about the committee’s plan to offer a pro-growth, pro-consumer alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act’s “regulatory waterboarding” that is harming the economy and consumers.
The Obama Financial Control Law
“Dodd-Frank should be called the Obama Financial Control Law because that’s what it is. It stands as a monument to the arrogance and hubris of man in that its answer to incomprehensible complexity and government control is yet more incomprehensible complexity and more government control.”
'Regulatory Waterboarding' of Small Businesses Must Stop
“Washington’s regulatory waterboarding is drowning community banks and small businesses and sinking the hopes and dreams of millions of low and middle income Americans. I need not tell you we are losing, on average, one community financial institution every day in America. And they are not perishing of natural causes. The sheer weight, cost, complexity and uncertainty of federal regulation is killing them off – and for the sake of hardworking Americans it’s just got to stop.”
Tougher Penalties for Defrauding Consumers
“Our better approach will demand accountability from both financial institutions and financial regulators. We will toughen penalties for those who engage in wrongdoing and defraud consumers.”
No More Bailouts
“Our approach will help build the healthy and secure financial system Americans deserve. One that protects consumers by letting you serve their needs in competitive, transparent and innovative markets, vigorously policed for force and fraud. One that ends taxpayer-funded bailouts and instead unleashes America’s entrepreneurial potential. It will provide desperately needed regulatory relief and halt the unbridled growth of the unaccountable, arrogant bureaucracy that is dragging us towards the failed economy of a European-style social democracy.”
Holding Washington Accountable with Cost-Benefit Tests
“We will also hold Washington accountable. One way we will do that is by making sure every financial regulation passes a rigorous cost-benefit test. The Ranking Democrat on my committee has called cost-benefit tests ‘dangerous.’ But shouldn’t we know the impact a proposed regulation will have on our economy before it gets implemented? Only in Washington is this called ‘dangerous.’ In my hometown and yours, it’s called common sense.”
Effective Capital Standards, Not Government Control
“The bold and better alternative you will see from committee Republicans will provide vast regulatory relief for financial institutions in exchange for meeting high, but simple, capital requirements. If financial institutions elect to hold strong Tier 1 capital, then they should gain relief from both Dodd-Frank and Basel’s burdensome regulations, neither of which were meant for community banks and shouldn’t apply to them to begin with.”
Washington Bureaucrats vs. Consumers’ Freedom
“As we move forward, it’s important to remember that this is not going to be a debate between regulation and de-regulation. No, this is going to be a debate over the future of our economy and the hopes and dreams of millions. On one side will be those who passionately believe you improve the economy by taking more from the private sector and consumers and giving it to bureaucrats in Washington because they are smarter than you. And on the other side are those of us who just as passionately believe the true source of prosperity is not and never will be found in Washington. We believe our true source of prosperity has and will always be freedom, free markets and free enterprise. We believe well-functioning, transparent and efficient capital markets provide a ladder of opportunity, and when all Americans have more opportunities, the economy rises with them.”
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