Providing For Further Consideration Of H.R. 4173, Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
Providing For Further Consideration Of H.R. 4173, Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act Of 2009
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Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule.
It's been fascinating to listen to the debate here, and a lot of hyperbole has come forward. We have heard terms like the ``Republican recession,'' and ``Wild West mentality.'' And the fascinating thing that I have just been talking to a couple of my staff members about is much of the legislation which is being criticized so harshly was signed into law by not George W. Bush but the President before George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton. So I think that we should recognize that there has been a lot of bipartisanship in creating what we all admit have been excesses.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we found that the regulators were asleep at the switch. The name Bernie Madoff was thrown out earlier. The fact of the matter is we know that the regulators were asleep at the switch when it came to dealing with that. We can look at a wide range of other areas where inadequate oversight took place. The question that we have before us right now is do we want to create what many of us are concerned about, and that is unintended consequences?
One of the things that we have found over the past year plus has been a tremendous contraction in credit. Individuals who want to utilize their credit cards or start a business, buy a home, have been having real difficulty gaining access to credit. We've seen this contraction take place.
My concern, as we look at this legislation, is that we're going to take this contraction of credit and make it permanent. We will basically be making it permanent. Why? Because we are going to codify a regulatory structure which is going to undermine the ability of the American people to have access to the best quality product at the lowest possible price.
A lot of things have been said and done over the past year which I think lead us to be overreacting. This massive expansion of government. We can start with the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, this 2,500-page bill that we just reported out with all these appropriation bills that had an 85 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. This is not a way to encourage and lay the groundwork for us to get our economy moving again. So I am very concerned about that.
I want to talk about one particular amendment, Mr. Speaker, that I offered in the Rules Committee, and that amendment dealt with a huge inequity that unfortunately took place when the economic downturn began. We unfortunately have seen a lot of financial institutions go under. One of them that went under very early on was a California institution known as IndyMac Bank. At that time, which was July of last year, we found that we had the $100,000 guarantee and that was it. Shortly thereafter, as more institutions went down, we increased that level to $250,000.
My colleague Ms. Harman introduced an amendment which I offered in the Rules Committee earlier today which would simply have allowed us to have a chance to debate that. There are just under 9,000 depositors and a total of $233 million that would be making these individuals whole who have been depositors because the depositors in other financial institutions, Mr. Speaker, were able to have the $250,000 guarantee provided, and yet these depositors at IndyMac, victimized in the same way that these other depositors were with the failure of institutions, were unfortunately prevented from being able to do that. We simply wanted the House to debate that amendment so that we'd have the chance to make these hardworking men and women from not only California but across the country who happened to be depositors at this institution to be able to receive what every other depositor who dealt with a failed institution following its failure was able to face.
I offered Ms. Harman's amendment, I was happy to join with her in doing that, and on a party-line vote, we as Republicans said that this amendment should be made in order; the Democrats chose to vote en masse against allowing a debate to take place for these hardworking individuals who had deposits that were in excess of $100,000.
So, Mr. Speaker, in light of that and the unintended consequences which I right now am foreseeing, I hope very much that we can defeat this rule. Defeating the rule, because so many amendments that should have been made in order were not made in order, will allow us to come back and put into place a very, very decent work product that can end this contraction of credit and get our economy back on track.
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