Gutierrez at Insurance, Housing, and Community Opportunity Subcommittee hearing on Mortgage Origination

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairwoman Biggert for holding this hearing on mortgage origination. I would like to welcome the witnesses here today.

It's been almost a year since this chamber passed the historic Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or Dodd-Frank. These past few months have been especially critical to the implementation of many important provisions in this landmark bill.

For the first time in the history of the United States and thanks to the passage of Dodd-Frank, an agency has been created to specifically serve, assist and most importantly protect American consumers from the unfair and abusive practices of financial service providers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB, is a central provision in Dodd-Frank that is expected to provide a crucial role to protect consumers and help ensure that our country never finds itself again on the brink of economic collapse.

Undoubtedly, the rulemaking period for provisions in Dodd-Frank that deals with ameliorating our housing system, and the transfer of authority of many of these provisions to the CFPB--which we will discuss today-- is exceptionally important to the national recovery of our economy.

In approximately a week, many important activities will be transferred to the CFPB. This agency will be responsible for overseeing new regulations that will address and reform the abuses and deceptive practices in our nation's housing industry. I would like to commend the CFPB for the measures they've already taken to develop a single, more streamlined, user-friendly mortgage disclosure form and for engaging key industry representatives and consumer advocates in this process.

I would like to enter into the record an article in the American Banker that further highlights the CFPB's leadership and diligence on this issue.

The CFPB will become a vital agency in handling many important and necessary proposals that were included in Dodd-Frank, and which once fully implemented will address our nation's housing crisis and will help American homeowners during the most devastating economic downturn of our times.

I look forward to hearing the thoughts and opinions from all of our witnesses here today on the myriad of reforms focusing on mortgage origination regulations.

Thank you.

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