Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1090, Retail Investor Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker. Rather than having a mere Speaker pro tempore, as I had the opportunity to do as a freshman in the majority, it is always exciting to be presided over by the actual Speaker of the body, the second in line to be President of the United States, and particularly somebody who has dedicated so much of his life to public service, Mr. Speaker, as you have, and left his mark on this institution.

I am sure that there will be additional opportunities for showing our great regard and esteem with which this body holds you, Mr. Speaker. But I think it is somewhat apt that perhaps, if not the final time you act as presiding officer of this body, at least the final rule is related to retirement, which you, Mr. Speaker, will presumably soon be experiencing, and is an important topic of discussion for this body.

Now, we may have our disagreements about whether curtailing this rule is in the interest of the American people or not, but I know that we both have a deep and abiding interest in making sure that Americans are safe in their retirement. I think it is wonderful that you are highlighting the importance of retirement security by presiding over this particular debate yourself, Mr. Speaker.

I rise in opposition to the rule, which is a structured rule for H.R. 1090. Frankly, it is premature to be considering this bill when we don't know what the final rules will look like out of the Department of Labor, rather than allow the Department of Labor to continue doing its job, which has included many stakeholders.

I know firsthand the Secretary of Labor has not only reached out to me and met with me on numerous occasions as well as my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and has appeared before one of the committees of jurisdiction that I serve on, the Committee on Education and the Workforce, of which you, Mr. Speaker, are a prior chair as well, and engaged with the financial services community, consumer protection organizations, and many others in his very earnest and serious attempt at making sure that the many shortcomings of the initial draft rule, which you and I might agree on, Mr. Speaker, are addressed in the final rulemaking. I think the Secretary deserves that opportunity. The hardworking men and women of the Department of Labor deserve that opportunity.

And then, if, in fact, the mark is missed, it might be appropriate for this body to consider amending or changing any rule to address the fears that both of us share on both sides of the aisle with regard to ensuring that people of low and moderate income do have access to high-quality advice and that the legitimate educational activities of financial services organizations are allowed to continue to provide that type of advice.

Now, this legislation is somewhat wrapped in a seemingly arcane matter. It has to do with whether it is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor or the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding new fiduciary standards of care.

We had the chair of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Hensarling, before us in the Rules Committee yesterday. He simply said that, under Dodd-Frank, the SEC has the ability to pass rules regarding fiduciary standards of care. I don't think anybody disputes that the SEC has the legal authority to do so.

I question here--and I think this was well established--that they are unlikely, because of their ongoing implementation work in many other areas, to get to this any time soon, whereas the Department of Labor is nearing the end of a 2-year-long-plus process around trying to make sensible rules to ensure that conflicts of interest within retirement advice are offered, consumer protections are provided, and the market is allowed to operate in a more efficient way with regard to offering quality retirement products and appropriate retirement products to consumers.

After the Department of Labor retracted the flawed first version of this rule several years ago, they released a new version of the rule in 2015. They have been getting input from a broad spectrum of stakeholders through a long and extended comment period.

I have provided feedback. Stakeholders in the retirement community have. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have. We all know what some of the fundamental issues that we are trying to address are, Mr. Speaker.

Today most Americans are not saving enough for retirement and are not securing their retirement. The retirement savings gap is estimated at $14 trillion, and one in five Americans who are approaching retirement have zero private retirement savings.

As the ranking member on the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee of the Education and the Workforce Committee, I am very interested in working in a bipartisan fashion to address this savings gap. Helping to make sure that Americans save for retirement is not a partisan issue. Whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, eventually, you are going to need to retire, some of us, Mr. Speaker, before others.

This bill did not have to be partisan either. I think, if we had waited and targeted any particular flaws in the final rule, there might have been an ability to build a bipartisan consensus. I am optimistic that the Secretary of Labor and the Department of Labor will get their rules right.

Investors need to be able to trust the person advising them about the money they need to live after retirement. On the other hand, we need to protect individuals' and small businesses' access to advice.

Mistakes in investments cost billions of dollars to individuals and the economy. Of course, a mistake can occur with wrongful advice from somebody who has a conflict of interest, but mistakes can also occur if there is a lack of access to quality advice. We need to be cognizant of both of those potentials as we look at improving the ability of the American people to save for their retirement.

I know that everybody involved with this rule and many of the stakeholders who will be impacted actually agree on a lot of the big concepts. They agree generally that financial advisers should use the best interest or fiduciary standard because the client's best interest should be paramount.

The main disagreement is about how to make this happen and how to implement the rule in a way that makes sense. Most advisers today do what is in the best interest of their client. They are good actors, and they help their clients save for retirement.

It is critical that our final rule, as the Secretary himself has said, does not upend an entire business model that works for good actors and works for many American families. However, making sure that we have a standard in place that the few bad actors need to abide by and are not able to wreak havoc in allowing American families to plan for their retirement is also essential.

Now, just because there is disagreement on some of the specifics of the rule doesn't mean that we should use a bill that wholesale removes this authority and transfers it entirely to an SEC entity, which is unlikely to proceed with rulemaking and can't even proceed with rulemaking while this President is in office under a timeline even if they were to begin expeditiously. So, effectively, this underlying legislation is an effort to thwart the ability of this President, this Secretary of Labor, and even the SEC under this President, from acting in a way to protect the American people from conflicts of interest in retirement products that are not suitable for their needs.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1090 would actually prevent the Department of Labor from issuing any sort of fiduciary rule until after the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a rule. Now, the Department of Labor clearly has the authority to write and implement this rule. That is not even being called into question; it is simply the timeline of which agency goes first. But due to the realities of the SEC, the Commission is not moving forward a rule any time in the near future, and that is simple reality.

So what this bill actually does is it effectively kills the Department of Labor's ability under President Obama to update the fiduciary standard under ERISA. Would it make sense for Congress to mandate that the IRS couldn't take action to collect taxes until the Treasury acted first? This is a similar situation.

I believe the Department of Labor must take into account the high number of outstanding questions and requests for comments that they proposed in the rule, the incredible volume of feedback the rule has received, including from myself and Members on both sides of the aisle and outside stakeholders. To date, there has been a number of letters from both parties requesting changes to the proposed rule. I signed onto a letter with 96 Democrats, and there are over 3,500 public comments, hundreds of thousands of people signing their names to petitions. The Department of Labor hopefully will listen to this feedback as they issue their final draft rule to make the effort streamlined while protecting investors and workers.

My staff and I have had dozens of meetings and phone calls to the Department of Labor with Secretary Perez. I have submitted over two dozen questions for the record to the Department of Labor on the subject, and I am satisfied and optimistic that these concerns will be addressed in the final rule.

I am just now leading a letter with several of my colleagues requesting an additional comment period to look at the changes the Department of Labor is planning to make to the rule. So the answer, I think, Mr. Speaker, is to take the time to get these rules right, make sure they don't have unintended consequences, and not prejudge them by invalidating them before they are out of the gate. That is what I consider a constructive way forward.

Mr. Speaker, I have learned from these conversations that we need to move forward with a productive process, and I believe the Labor Secretary is committed to doing that. We may have disagreements about the final outcome, but we should see what that final outcome is before we pass legislation that requires us to pretend that the problem doesn't exist.

While the specifics of the fiduciary rule are important, and DOL needs to make changes and communicate them to stakeholders, this legislation is very counterproductive to those ongoing discussions that have occurred over the last several years. This bill would effectively prevent protections from being implemented after years of work, meetings, and due diligence involving financial services companies and involving retirement advocacy organizations, not to mention the fact that this bill will not become law. The President has already put out a promise to veto the legislation should it reach his desk. So, instead, we should be spending our time on more important work for the American people. With just over a month to take action until a government shutdown and with the transportation bill expiring, we have six congressional working days to raise a clean debt ceiling. I am hopeful, Mr. Speaker, that you will be able to bear witness to that as a Member and leader of this body in the short future, in the next couple of days. Just as astonishing, we have the highway funding shutdown.

So here we are again. I think that we need to work on bills that have a chance of becoming law. We shouldn't prejudge rules that I think the Secretary has really worked hard to ensure involve multiple stakeholders, and hopefully, we will be satisfied with the final rules that address many of the potential unintended consequences and concerns that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have raised, including myself.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, many American workers don't have access to paid sick days, which means they can't miss work without losing a day's pay or risking their job security. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up legislation that would allow workers to earn paid sick leave.

Mr. Speaker, everyone should be able to take care of themselves or their loved ones when they are sick and not have to worry about losing their jobs or falling behind on their bills because of illness.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, even if my friends on the other side of the aisle think they might not like this final rule, let's at least give the Department of Labor, after several years of hard work, the chance to produce it. If at that point the majority feels that there are parts of the rule that they don't want or don't like or want to invalidate or are counterproductive, that would be the appropriate time for this kind of bill to intervene in those efforts before those rules are finalized.

Mr. Speaker, I have been very satisfied with the work of the Department of Labor and the Secretary of Labor to engage Members of this body on both sides of the aisle and the financial services community to ensure that many of the acknowledged flaws that are in the draft bill are addressed in any final rule that is brought forward.

This bill is effectively an effort to thwart the entire process around addressing a real problem, and that real problem is the conflict of interest and poor quality retirement advice that is being given to too many American families.

The Secretary is not seeking to upend a business structure that allows access to quality financial advice for millions of middle class American families, and I believe that any concerns with regard to that will be addressed in the final rulemaking.

With little time left before so many deadlines and cliffs that this body has--transportation funding expiring, the Federal budget expiring without a potential government shutdown, the debt ceiling, and so many others--why are we discussing a bill that is not going to become law? Again, you are seeking to overturn a ruling before it is made. The President himself would veto this bill. There will not be two-thirds of this body to overturn this veto.

When we are discussing taking actions that affect actions that the President is taking, keep in mind that under our constitutional republic, if we were to override the President, it would take both Democrats and Republicans, and Democrats in large numbers. Now, I understand there may be a few handful of my Democratic colleagues supporting this final bill, not very many, certainly not enough to bring it close to the two-thirds threshold. So, again, that would qualify as a waste of time for this body, and a premature waste of time at that.

Let's give the Department of Labor the ability and the benefit of the doubt to bring forward these rules, and then perhaps if they overstep and have a lot of flaws, then, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans might have more Democrats willing to join them in counteracting these rules. But at this point, it is entirely premature to interdict the entire rulemaking process to protect American retirement without even knowing what those rules are that we are seeking to circumvent.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I think that the remarks by my colleague on the Rules Committee are part of the problem here. The way that laws are passed require the House and the Senate to pass a bill in the same form and the President to sign that bill, or if the President vetoes that bill, two-thirds of the body to overrule it.

And, of course, no one doubts that if this body of the House wants, they can continue to pass bills that the Senate won't bring up, as they have dozens, I would have to get a count, perhaps, hundreds of times, or bills that the Senate will pass but the President will veto, and the President vetoed, I believe, his fifth bill with the defense reauthorization last week.

Certainly, if the majority chooses, if the Republicans choose, this body can continue to do that, or this body can work together with the Senate and the President to pass laws that address issues that the American people have brought to us to solve, and that takes compromise. That doesn't mean this body should say, ``It is our way or the highway,'' and the Senate says, ``Sorry, it is the highway,'' and the President says, ``Sorry, it is the highway.'' It means, roll up your sleeves and work together.

If we are going to solve a problem like immigration in this country, our broken immigration system, and replace our broken immigration system with one that works, that restores border security, the rule of law, benefits our economy, and unites families, it will take all sides working together. Guess what? Last session, the Senate passed a bill. It was this House that didn't spend even a minute of time on the floor debating that bill or bringing forward something that the American people demand to replace our broken immigration system with one that works and protects our country.

So, again, I don't doubt the ability of this body to keep passing bills that don't go anywhere. Perhaps, it makes some of my Republican colleagues feel good. They go home, and they say: Gee, we passed this out of the House. We passed that out of the House. The problem is the Senate. The problem is the President.

But that is just an excuse for blame and more and more problems. I think what the American people want is not this finger pointing. They don't want the Senate to say: We solved immigration; it was the House's fault. They don't want the House to say: We defunded ObamaCare; it is the Senate and President's fault they didn't do it.

They want us to work together, work together to implement the Affordable Care Act and address some of the problems in it, work together to replace our broken immigration system with one that works, one to work together to cut our budget deficit, one to work together to fund an infrastructure and transportation bill, and--this is an example--if there are deficiencies in the final rule, work together to make sure that those deficiencies are addressed so that our common goal the Democrats and Republicans share of making sure that Americans have quality, nonconflicted advice in their retirement savings is able to occur across the country.

I call on Speaker Boehner and, of course, whoever succeeds him as Speaker, as well as the rest of the House leadership, to present truly bipartisan efforts to move forward on the various issues that we face and not yield to the easy temptation to pass single-Chamber bills in the House that aren't even brought up by the Senate and, if they were, it would be vetoed by the President. That is not how laws are made. That is how rhetoric is made. The American people want their problems addressed by this body, not just more hot wind and rhetoric that this bill is an example of.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This is a very interesting discussion with my colleague from Georgia. When you look at the work product of this body in the House of Representatives, this body has voted to repeal ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, over 54 times. So it is clear to the American people--my colleague from Georgia can tell his constituents--we voted to repeal ObamaCare. We did. I didn't vote for that, but the majority of this body did that--not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times. I can count all the way up to over 54 times. In fact, many of us are losing track about how many times this body is on the Record opposing ObamaCare, but that is not how laws are made. That is part of the process. One would say once should suffice for it to pass this body.

The bill also would need to pass the Senate. And as the President has indicated, it is unlikely that something called by many people ObamaCare would be repealed by a President named Barack Obama. He, of course, would veto any legislation that ended the Affordable Care Act, his signature health care policy that he passed in his first term in office.

So, again, it looks at what we do with this body. When one wonders why the approval ratings of the House of Representatives are as low and continuing to plummet as they are, I think it is because rather than address the concerns of the American people around making health care work and more affordable and passing constructive laws through the system that address some of the shortcomings in ObamaCare, whether it is addressing some of the shortcomings in Dodd-Frank, rather than taking that path, this body instead is passing single-Chamber bills, like we are here today, with regard to undermining a rule that we haven't even seen yet because some people think it might be counterproductive or bad. If it is, let's have that discussion.

But, again, as a Member of this body, I have been happy so far with the efforts of the Secretary of Labor to engage with the stakeholder groups and Members of this body to get this rule right. I honestly believe that the only reason this legislation was brought to the floor is it is hard for the Republican caucus to agree on much else. It is hard for them to agree on something that might be a governing effort to pass. So, instead, we are dealing with single-Chamber bills. On weeks that we could be dealing with funding transportation or infrastructure or cutting our deficit or going after government waste and fraud, we are instead repealing ObamaCare again and again and again or repealing a rule that we haven't even seen because people think they might not like it if they do.

Look, we have a choice in this body. The Republicans in the majority can either sit back and bring partisan legislation to the floor each week and watch costs of the American people go up and watch problems go unsolved, or we can come to the table and start a serious discussion with the House and the Senate, with the President, with Members of this body on both sides of the aisle, about important things that actually move our country forward, grow our economy, promote our national security, reduce our deficit, including the basics of keeping our government open and paying our bills on time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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