Providing For Consideration of Conference Report on H.R. 4173, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, House Resolution 1490 provides for consideration of the conference report to H.R. 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This rule provides for 2 hours of debate on the conference report, it waives all points of order, and, further, the rule provides for one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.
Madam Speaker, today we will take an historic vote on the most significant reform to our financial industry since the New Deal. These comprehensive reforms will reduce threats to our financial system, increase oversight and prevent future bailouts. The bill strikes a responsible balance, ending the ``wild west'' era on Wall Street, while laying a new regulatory foundation for long-term growth which is stable and secure.
In the fall of 2008, this country was brought to its knees by a financial crisis, the likes of which I hope we never experience again. A crisis of this magnitude calls for reforms of similar proportion. Many elements on and off Wall Street contributed to the meltdown, and this bill carefully crafts responsible solutions in each area. The bill protects consumers through the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will oversee the loan writing for banks and nonbanks and serve as the primary watchdog for consumers. For the very first time, nonbank entities will have Federal oversight, a critical element to reining in abusive practices and products. An oversight council is established under this bill to make certain financial institutions do not become a systemic threat to our economic stability.
We establish a process to close and liquidate significant financial institutions so if a failing firm begins to fail, it is closed, and it will no longer be too big to fail. This dissolution mechanism ensures Main Street comes first--not Wall Street. We deal with hedge funds, credit rating agencies, mortgage reform, executive compensation, and investor protection in this bill. We bring these issues out of the shadows and into the light so there is transparency to protect the system.
I worked to ensure a study on high frequency trading was included in this bill. As we saw from the ``flash crash'' in May, when the Dow Jones lost nearly a thousand points in a matter of minutes because of computer error, we need to know the effects of technologically advanced practices such as high frequency trading on the long-term investor. Also, transparency will be brought to the derivatives markets. Businesses and manufacturers will be able to reduce their own risk while protections are put in place for the overall system, providing regulators with a clear picture of the derivatives market.
Another important provision in the House was strengthened in conference. It calls for strong limits on proprietary trading, or what most are calling ``the Volcker rule.'' This provision strikes a good balance in banning proprietary trading without disrupting client services and asset management. In other words, banks can no longer gamble with their customers' money. The bill we are considering here today ensures there is no place to hide by closing loopholes, improving consolidated supervision, and establishing robust regulatory oversight.
I'm proud to stand here with my colleagues today providing for consideration of a bill making the necessary reforms and establishing robust regulatory oversight. In this bill we protect consumers, taxpayers, and depositors. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the rule and the underlying bill.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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r. PERLMUTTER. I will just take one moment, Madam Speaker, to remind my friend from Texas that by cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, prosecuting two wars without paying for them, and letting Wall Street run amok, in the last month of George Bush's term in office, we lost 780,000 jobs that month. This country lost a lot of jobs. By not enforcing reasonable regulation, we lost all sorts of jobs. But since January, February of 2009 until last month, we reversed that to the point where there were 400,000 jobs created, a swing of over 1.2 million jobs per month in this country. My friends on the Republican side of the aisle oppose reining in Wall Street. We know, and Americans across this country know that something has to be done.
With that, I yield 3 minutes to my friend from California, Congresswoman Matsui.
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would respond to my friend from Texas that, first of all, losing 780,000 jobs a month, as we were when George Bush left office, that's job killing. That's terrible. One of the things we're trying to do is right that ship. Second, he says that they set up a bankruptcy process for these banks. Well, as Democrats, we said, These failing banks, if they're failing, we're not going to let them linger along like they might in a chapter 11 bankruptcy. We close them. We liquidate them. That's the purpose of this. No more bailouts.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to my friend from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. I have to smile when I listen to my friends talk about job killing, when letting Wall Street run wild, gambling like it was just a big casino, results in 780,0000 jobs a month being lost to the point that during this recession we have lost 8 million jobs. And we've got to put people back to work. We need certainty, we need reasonable regulation. That's the purpose of this bill.
I yield 2 minutes to my friend from Georgia (Mr. Scott).
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would say to my friend from Illinois, with whom I work on lots of things in this arena, I don't know where she is coming from saying there are taxes on small banks. There are FDIC charges so that they have sufficient reserves, but there are no taxes, as she would suggest.
I yield 2 minutes to my friend from North Carolina (Mr. Miller).
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Royce mentions 2003, 2004, 2005 should have changed the GSEs in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, the Republicans controlled the House, the Republicans controlled the Senate, the Republicans controlled the White House, and they didn't do it.
In fact, his former chairman on financial services, Republican Mr. Oxley, says the critics forgot that the House stepped up on reforming bills, but he fumes about the criticism that people are giving about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He says all the--this is from the Financial Times, September 9, 2008: All of the handwringing and bedwetting is going on without remembering how the House stepped up on this. He said: What did we get from the White House? We got the one-finger salute. Very graphic quotation from Mr. Oxley, Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee saying that it was the White House that stopped the changes that needed to be stopped, and it's the billions of dollars from those mortgages from 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 under Republican leadership that are weighing down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that under the Democrats we offered conservatorship and that's what they're in now, like a bankruptcy.
With that, I yield 2 minutes to my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).
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Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my friend from Texas, but we couldn't disagree more about the value of this bill and the process we have gone through to get to this point.
I would first like to thank the chairman and also the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee for holding hearing after hearing, taking testimony for the last year-and-a-half, almost 2 years, on the various subjects that are addressed within the bill, and for holding a very open and transparent conference that highlighted much of the bill and the differences between the House and the Senate. I think that kind of transparency is what we need to see in the financial markets, and that is at the heart of all of this.
In September of 2008, we had a terrible financial free-fall, starting with placing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship, and then a whole series of failures towards the end of that month. Ultimately the President of the United States, George Bush, he and his chief cabinet officers asked this Congress to support the banking system in a way that none of us could have ever conceived, but that was needed in an emergency to save the banking system and keep this economy going in some fashion or another.
Even so, under the rules and the approach taken by the Republicans who were in office throughout the Bush administration and this Congress from 1994 on to 2006, Wall Street was unregulated. It was allowed to just go wild, and it resulted in a terrible cataclysm that we are all paying for now.
The bill that is before this body addresses nine separate subjects: Consumer protection; investor protection; it deals with credit rating agencies; derivatives; hedge funds; insurance; it deals with salaries so that we don't incentivize too big of risk taking by executives so they put their banks or their financial organizations at risk; and it deals with too-big-to-fail, putting a structure in place so that if financial institutions get way out there, over-leveraged, as we saw in 2008, that we have a system in place where we can liquidate them and close them, not put them on life support in a bankruptcy, as my Republican colleagues would suggest.
This is a time to bring certainty back into the market and reasonable regulation and reasonable enforcement back to the financial system. The bill that is being brought to this Congress and this House today does just that.
This country needs to rein in Wall Street. We need to protect Main Street and the taxpayers, the people that live throughout this country. This bill goes a long way toward doing that.
With that, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.
I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
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