[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 100 (Tuesday, June 13, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E821-E822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FINANCIAL CHOICE ACT OF 2017

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. GENE GREEN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, June 8, 2017

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 10) to 
     create hope and opportunity for investors, consumers, and 
     entrepreneurs by ending bailouts and Too Big to Fail, holding 
     Washington and Wall Street accountable, eliminating red tape 
     to increase access to capital and credit, and repealing the 
     provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act that make America less 
     prosperous, less stable, and less free, and for other 
     purposes:

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chair, in the 9 year's since the 2008 
financial crisis, there's a consensus that the crisis was caused by too 
much risk and lax regulation. Because of banks' overinvestment in risky 
financial products, our country was plunged into the worst economic 
crisis since the Great Depression.
  Housing prices, where middle-class Americans for decades have focused 
their investment, fell by more than 30 percent and an estimated 5.5 
million more American jobs were lost to slow growth during the crisis. 
My hometown of Houston, Texas, was further hit by the sudden fall of 
oil prices in 2014 and the attendant layoffs and slowdown in the local 
economy, making it hard for my constituents to save, provide for their 
families, and plan for the future.
  Seven years after Dodd-Frank was enacted, our country is just now 
beginning to recover. Dodd-Frank was put in place to make sure that the 
conditions that led to the crisis cannot occur again. If the hardship 
suffered by the

[[Page E822]]

millions of Americans who saw the value of their home and their 
retirement funds disappear fails to convince my Republican colleagues 
of the need to make sure that banks cannot gamble with the money of 
middle-class Americans, it's difficult to imagine what would.
  The CHOICE Act recreates the conditions that led to the 2008 crisis 
by allowing banks to again engage in risky investment behavior with 
their clients' money, and limiting oversight of banks by the federal 
government. If a key financial institution like the Lehmann Brothers, 
whose collapse contributed to the severity of the crisis in 2008, again 
collapses, the CHOICE Act then limits the ability of the government to 
intervene to guard against a total collapse of the financial system.
  The assault that the CHOICE Act represents on the livelihood of 
middle and working class Americans isn't limited to this. Although 
consumer protection should be the most basic goal of all lawmakers, 
this bill subjugates consumer protection and welfare to the banking and 
finance industry in two additional ways. First, it will gut the 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created by Dodd-Frank 
and tasked with protecting Americans from irresponsible or predatory 
behavior by financial institutions. The CHOICE Act thus nearly 
eradicates the ability of the U.S. government to monitor the safety of 
financial products for everyday Americans, thus leaving a massive void 
in consumers' daily lives, as financial product offerings continue to 
expand and grow more and more complex and sometimes difficult to 
understand.
  The Wrong CHOICE Act will also nullify the much-needed fiduciary 
rule, allowing investment advisors to make decisions with the money of 
their clients that aren't in their clients' best interest. This is 
shameful, and will allow bad apple investment advisors to take 
advantage of often elderly clients who, understandably, assume that 
those investment advisors will help them save for their retirement 
rather than put their own fees first.
  I ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle today to stand with 
our nation's retirees and working families and vote down this 
irresponsible bill.

                          ____________________