Financial Institution Customer Protection Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HECK of Washington. Mr. Chair, as a fellow Washingtonian, might I just observe that you make that dais look good.

I actually counterintuitively want to start out by thanking my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Luetkemeyer), for taking this issue on.

We had a problem in a lot of communities around the country with businesses getting access to the banking system, and I know he worked this very hard last year. He investigated; he talked to banks, businesses, and regulators; and he actually negotiated a solution with the FDIC that he had pushed and pushed until they actually adopted it.

It was a good solution. In fact, part of this bill would essentially codify that. What it would say is, you can't use FIRREA to go after whole sectors of the economy. It has to be specifically and individually based. You have to have a reason to believe that an individual business was engaged in fraud if you were going to use the banking system to get at them. Good solution, constructive solution. My hat is off to you, sir.

Unfortunately, this bill, as has been suggested earlier, goes farther. Section 3 makes it a lot harder for the Department of Justice to investigate financial solutions because, as has been suggested, it takes direct and specific aim at the powers under FIRREA, as the gentleman from Minnesota had indicated. It puts limits on them as to when subpoenas can be issued. To me, frankly, that is a solution in search of a problem.

FIRREA has been the key statute in going after fraud that, in fact, helped lead to the Great Recession and the crisis, and the wiping out of $13 trillion in net worth. Frankly, I am one of those people who believes we need more prosecutions, not fewer, for all the damage and harm done to Americans throughout this land.

I am very reluctant to embrace any language that substantially weakens or obstructs FIRREA's ability to investigate fraud. I do agree with my friend that investigations and our oversight of them could be improved by requiring a paper trail. I worked with him to see if we could find a compromise that did that, but we couldn't. So ultimately, we had to disagree, and this is a disagreement that I will characterize as being a very strong one.

The truth of the matter is, in the last two calendar years alone, FIRREA was the operative statute which led to $40 billion in fines and recoveries being levied. Truth be told, it is very, very unlikely, if not highly unlikely, that any of those $40 billion in fines or restitution could have been recovered if the language of this legislation had been in effect; $20 billion of which was restitution to harmed parties, people who lost their homes inappropriately because they had had fraud perpetuated upon them.

I don't think that is what the American public wants right now. I think the American public is still eager for some accountability for the actions and behavior that led to the Great Recession.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HECK of Washington. So I join in the chorus of my colleagues who suggest that this bill is actually not just a step backward but two giant steps backward. There is an issue here that could be worked on. This is not the right solution; and, I might add, it is not going to become law because it has already been indicated by the executive branch this probably isn't going anywhere.

I would entreat you--in the spirit of trying to find a solution to a real problem--please, let us set aside, vote ``no,'' and not enact that which is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist and, in fact, does considerable harm to the American public and to our ability to hold people accountable.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source