Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following statement during a full Committee hearing entitled, “Dodd-Frank Turns 15: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone.
Before I discuss today’s hearing topic, we just got news that inflation has jumped to 2.7% as Trump’s tariffs have started to take effect. This is another reason Trump’s reckless tariffs and attacks on the Fed’s independence are so dangerous, and consumers and small businesses will pay the price.
It’s striking that with this hearing, we are marking the 15th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, legislation enacted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which unfolded under a Republican’s watch with President George W. Bush’s administration. And yet, this same week, Republicans in Congress are repeating the same mistakes that triggered the crisis in the first place. It’s as if they’ve learned nothing from the painful lessons of 2008: the wave of foreclosures, the millions of jobs lost, and the devastation of countless families watching their entire life savings vanish in a blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, over the past fifteen years, Republicans spent more time trying to undo Dodd-Frank than they have spent time trying to protect consumers and investors. They’ve done more to fight for the interests of the same Wall Street CEOs whose reckless actions destabilized our economy than fighting for the Main Street and working-class Americans who power our economy.
There’s no clearer example of this than what we’re witnessing just this week. Republicans are pushing two particularly dangerous bills that will unleash risky cryptocurrency into our mainstream financial system without proper guardrails to protect hard-working Americans. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The rise of complex, poorly regulated financial instruments was precisely what sparked the 2008 crisis.
But these crypto bills don’t just risk another economic meltdown. They’re also riddled with loopholes that President Trump, that gave him the green light to continue his crypto scheme, that so far has netted him $1.2 billion. Yes, he owns crypto companies now. He owns crypto companies, Melania owns crypto companies, his sons own bitcoin companies. They’re mining bitcoin coins right now.
It’s appalling that this Republican-led Congress can sit idly by and enable this blatant scheme and cash grab especially after just voting so hard to hand Trump and his insiders a massive tax giveaway. This is more of the same: taking from hard-working Americans to further enrich billionaires and crypto insiders. That’s why I have joined with Ranking Member Lynch in leading Democrats in ‘Anti-Crypto Corruption Week’ where we are outlining the true economic costs of these dangerous bills.
Deregulating crypto and enabling a con by the most corrupt President in the history aren’t the only ways that Republicans are setting the stage for another 2008-style crisis. They’re also working with the Trump regime to gut a core pillar of Dodd-Frank: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is incredibly dangerous. The Consumer Bureau was created to ensure a federal watchdog monitors big banks to protect consumers from the abusive practices and holds institutions accountable for ripping off consumers.
But now Trump and the Republicans are making good on their promise to ‘delete’ the agency. From slashing CFPB’s budget in half to firing dedicated staff, or halting lawsuits that would return stolen money to victims from them, they’re dragging us back to the dark days before Dodd-Frank when consumers had no one looking out for them in the financial marketplace.
Committee Democrats are committed to defending the Dodd-Frank Act from Republicans’ 15-year campaign to repeal the law. We will also continue fighting against reckless deregulation that favors megabanks and Big Tech over community banks and credit unions, that puts our taxpayers at risk.
We will still see what happens when Republicans allow Wall Street, Big Tech, and Big Crypto toa police themselves. Spoiler alert: it will not end pretty for our constituents.
And with that, I yield back.”
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