Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3506, the Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act.

This bill will help reduce the burden and confusion of privacy notice requirements by providing exemption from sending an annual privacy notice for those institutions that do not share nonpublic customer information with unaffiliated third parties or those that do not change their privacy policies at all.

Under current law, banks and other financial institutions are required to send out an annual privacy notification to their customers informing them that nothing has changed, and they still do not share privacy information. This is often quite very confusing to customers.

Essentially, under my legislation, financial institutions are relieved of an unnecessary and redundant regulatory burden which will help lower costs and reduce junk mail that the customers receive in the mail every day. It will also lessen confusion to customers because they will no longer receive letters informing them that their bank's privacy policy has not changed at all.

Madam Speaker, it's important to note that this legislation only applies to those institutions that do not share personal financial information with third parties and do not change their privacy policies. This means that the privacy policy that banks must provide to consumers when they open an account remains completely unaffected. The bottom line is that nothing in this legislation in this bill allows for the disclosure of private information and companies are still prohibited from sharing any personal information with third parties.

Similar legislation has passed the House in previous Congresses with strong, bipartisan support; and I want to recognize the bipartisan manner in which that legislation was again handled this year.

Madam Speaker, I especially want to thank Chairman Frank and Ranking Member Bachus for their assistance with the legislation and their willingness to bring this legislation and assist me in bringing it to the House floor.

Finally, I want to thank the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) for his hard work on this legislation. He has done exemplary work throughout his 12 years here in this body, and we are going to miss his spirit and commitment of working in a bipartisan manner, and I appreciate his friendship as well.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote on this bill.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Madam Speaker, in closing, this bill is a win/win. It reduces an unnecessary and redundant regulatory burden for consumers, and I ask for adoption of the bipartisan legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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