Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, today released the following statement after the Committee’s first markup.  In her statement, she praises the bipartisan tone of the markup but also responds to a claim by the Committee majority made in a press release strong issued last night.

I appreciate the bipartisan nature of today’s Financial Services Committee markup in which we formally organized the Committee by adopting rules and appointing Members to subcommittees.  I am hopeful that it will set the tone of our future work together.

I also note that in a statement released yesterday to the press, our colleagues in the majority made a claim which misrepresents the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  Among other questionable assertions, it claims that Dodd-Frank “enshrined a ‘too-big-to-fail’ bailout scheme into law.”

However, Dodd-Frank specifically ends too-big-to-fail by prohibiting the bailout of a failing financial institution.  In fact, it mandates the orderly liquidation of such an institution, in which its executives are dismissed and its shareholders are wiped out.  The point of this process is to allow institutions to fail without causing catastrophic damage to the larger economy, other companies, small businesses, American taxpayers, and American families. 

We have much work to do, and I sincerely hope that we establish a fair representation of the facts as the basis for a sound, bipartisan working relationship.

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