Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Committee on Financial Services, gave the following floor statement on H.R. 4293, another Dodd-Frank rollback bill that would make it easy for Wall Street banks to get a passing grade on their stress tests. H.R. 4293 would effectively weaken a critical tool that protects Americans by ensuring large banks are adequately capitalized and prepared for a future downturn.

As Prepared for Delivery

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to focus on pushing through giveaways to Wall Street and megabanks like Wells Fargo that would be harmful to consumers, investors and our nation’s economy. Week after week, Republicans advance legislation that is reckless and misguided.

H.R. 4293 is yet another bad bill from the Republicans that weakens critical protections put in place by Democrats to prevent another financial crisis. As we have discussed, the bill undermines the stress test framework for our nation’s largest banks.

Stress tests are an important regulatory tool that have much improved the safety of our financial system. Mr. Speaker, when we crafted Dodd-Frank, we mandated these stress tests and put in place other enhanced prudential guardrails for large banks to not only prevent damage to our economy but also help grow our economy. And they are working. But H.R. 4293 weakens the rigor and frequency of those stress tests, a move that simply makes no sense.

Rather than harmful measures such as this one, Congress should be working to strengthen consumer protections, reform our broken system of credit reporting, provide tailored, responsible relief for community banks, and ensure that recidivist megabanks are held accountable for breaking the law.

I urge Members to oppose the bill and yield back the remainder of my time.

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