[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8343]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           BIG BANK BAILOUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, in my 29 years in Congress, 
the issue on which I heard the most from constituents in the shortest 
time was on the big bank bailouts of several years ago.
  When that was before us, I received 6,600 emails in one weekend just 
in my Washington office from Friday, when the office closed, until 
Monday, when we opened back up. This, of course, was in addition to the 
many thousands of phone calls, letters, and emails that came in during 
the week before and the week after.
  I opposed that big bank bailout, but, of course, extremely big 
business won again and the Congress voted for the bailout.
  Three years ago, in 2014, I wrote the following in a newsletter to my 
760,000 constituents:
  ``A few weeks ago, George Mason University released a report saying 
that `since the financial crisis, U.S. banking assets and deposits have 
continued to consolidate in a handful of large banks.' The five largest 
banks now hold 44 percent of U.S. banking assets compared to 23.5 
percent in early 2000. Liberals in Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law, 
which I opposed, supposedly to get back at the banks that caused our 
most recent financial troubles. The George Mason report also said the 
Dodd-Frank law is `disproportionately burdensome to small banks' and 
`creates a market expectation that designated firms are too big to 
fail.' Columnist Veronique de Rugy wrote that `the number of small 
banks has dropped dramatically over the years,' and this has been 
`driven by regulatory burdens that make it hard and expensive for small 
banks to survive.' I have been told by several east Tennessee bankers 
that, unfortunately, their fastest-growing departments have been their 
regulatory compliance sections. The more any business or industry comes 
under Federal regulation, the more it ends up being dominated by 
extremely big business.''
  Now, to update what I wrote in 2014. According to the Congressional 
Research Service, 1,744 banks have ceased to exist since the passage of 
Dodd-Frank. Many of those have been forced to merge with a bigger bank 
because they simply were not able to keep up with all the rules, 
regulations, and red tape of Dodd-Frank and the resulting compliance 
costs.

                              {time}  1115

  Even worse, 203 small banks have failed--been forced out of business 
by Big Government--with a resulting huge loss of jobs and lost 
investment by stockholders. In addition, nationally, 160 credit unions 
have closed. Either they failed or were forced to consolidate with a 
bigger credit union. Thus, Dodd-Frank, as most Federal regulatory 
legislation, ended up helping the big giants and hurting the little 
guys--the smallest banks and credit unions.
  In a study by Hester Peirce and Robert Greene, the authors wrote: 
``Regulatory compliance can be a particular challenge for small banks 
with limited compliance expertise. Regulatory expenses absorb a larger 
percentage of small banks' budgets than of their larger counterparts' 
budgets. As financial regulation has increased, so has banking 
concentration. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, imposes a new set of 
regulations that are disproportionately burdensome to small banks. 
Moreover, by designating the largest financial institutions as 
`systemically important,' Dodd-Frank creates a market expectation that 
designated firms are too big to fail and generates funding and other 
competitive advantages for the largest U.S. banks.''
  Liberals, Madam Speaker, often claim that they are for the little 
guys, and most Federal laws are well intended. But there is a saying to 
``beware of the tyranny of good intentions.'' Every industry that is 
highly federally regulated almost ends up in the hands of a few big 
giants.
  Federal regulators should start trying to help out the smallest 
business instead of always ending up helping extremely big business. 
That is something that happens in almost every business and industry in 
this country, and it needs to be reversed.

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