[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 38 (Monday, March 5, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S1329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



    Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Bill

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this week, we will be voting on an 
important piece of bipartisan legislation that recently passed out of 
the Senate Banking Committee, led by our colleague, Chairman Mike 
Crapo.
  The bill is called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and 
Consumer Protection Act. The purpose of the bill is to rightsize the 
onerous regulations that are currently imposed on community and 
independent banks and that stifle their ability to loan money to people 
who need access to credit in order to start a business or to grow a 
small business.
  Under the current law famously known as Dodd-Frank, these smaller 
banks are often treated just like the largest banks and financial 
institutions in our economy. That doesn't make any sense at all. Main 
Street, we need to remind some of our colleagues, is not Wall Street.
  The bill would make changes to reflect that important distinction. I 
can't tell you how many of my small bankers in Texas have told me they 
had to hire additional personnel, not to make more loans, just to 
comply with the onerous overregulation coming out of Washington, DC.
  Unfortunately, we lost over 2,000 banks nationwide since the end of 
2010. Two thousand banks have gone out of business, either as a result 
of a merger with a larger bank that could sustain the additional cost 
of complying with these regulations or those that have just given up 
and said: We can't cut it because of the costs, and we are hanging up 
our spurs. In Texas, 165 bank charters have vanished during that same 
timeframe--a 26-percent reduction. Like I said, some of the decline is 
due to mergers with larger banks, but there have also been a number of 
bank failures.
  We all heard about too big to fail, but some institutions were deemed 
essentially too small to save. They were the ones left behind and 
forgotten under Dodd-Frank. Because of the regulatory burdens, some 
small banks said enough is enough and opted to get out of the lending 
business altogether. You know who ends up paying the price and who ends 
up getting hurt? It is the married couple who wants to borrow money to 
buy their first home or, as I said earlier, a business that wants to 
expand and hire more people. Those are the people who ultimately get 
hurt.
  In this bill we are considering this week, we are trying to change 
that situation. No less than former Congressman Barney Frank--the 
Democratic author of the original law--has emphasized the point that we 
need now to remember: The bill we are voting on keeps in place rules 
and regulations that were imposed on large Wall Street banks after the 
financial crisis. In other words, the big banks on Wall Street were the 
ones that helped contribute to the financial crisis, and they are the 
ones that will continue to be regulated under Dodd-Frank, but the 
community and regional banks that were, in essence, the collateral 
damage to the great recession of 2008, following the big financial 
crisis, will finally see some needed and welcomed relief. Rigorous 
stress testing of large financial institutions will continue. 
Congressman Frank has said it would be ``wholly inaccurate'' to claim 
otherwise.
  So when some try to distort the bill's purpose and the provisions in 
the days ahead, I think it is important to keep that in mind and don't 
buy what they are selling. This bill will mostly, as I said, affect 
smaller community banks, which clearly don't fall under the same 
category as the titans of global finance.
  Last year, the Banking Committee solicited input from a broad array 
of stakeholders. The committee's idea was to say: Hey, all of you out 
there who greatly suffered under Dodd-Frank, how can we reduce the 
burdens you face? Those are the kind of questions all of us need to be 
asking back in our States.
  After extensive negotiations at all levels, and after hearing not 
just from financial entities great and small but also from consumer 
groups, the result is the bipartisan legislation we will soon consider 
on the Senate floor.
  The bill was formally introduced by a group of 10 Democrats and 10 
Republicans. You don't get much more bipartisan than that. I know the 
Senator from Idaho, the chairman of the committee, has had productive 
discussions as well with my friend and fellow Texan Chairman Hensarling 
on the House side, who heads up the House Financial Services Committee.
  While the new provisions will help community banks, credit unions, as 
well as midsized and regional banks, they will also ensure that key 
consumer protections remain in place. Some of these protections will 
even increase for consumers who have fallen on hard financial times or 
who are victims of fraud. Veterans and seniors particularly will 
benefit.
  Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has agreed that this 
commonsense bill will provide significant regulatory relief, and his 
predecessor, Janet Yellen, said it was a move in a good direction.
  While I would like to go further and provide additional relief from 
Dodd-Frank, we should nonetheless pass as much as we can and help 
America's local lenders build small businesses and strengthen our local 
communities.
  Let's get this bill--which is supported by a variety of stakeholders, 
including the Texas Independent Bankers Association--across the finish 
line this week.
  I wish to especially congratulate and thank our colleague from Idaho 
for all of his hard work, and I hope that all of us can emulate that 
hard work on a bipartisan basis to get this bill across the Senate 
floor and ultimately to the President for his signature.