Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, delivered the following testimony before the House Rules Committee in opposition to H.R. 6955, ‘the Main Street Capital Access Act,’ a  Republican Wall Street deregulation package:

Thank you, Chair Fox. We all care about community banks and credit unions. 

For that reason, Ranking Member Waters and Committee Democrats were pleased to work with Chair Hill on a package of community bank provisions included in our landmark housing bill, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. Now, even though Trump refused to sign it, that legislation has become the law of the land.

And those provisions help community lenders, not megabanks, big tech payment apps, or even payday lenders, debt collectors, and credit bureaus. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the bill before you today. 

H.R. 6955 is Wall Street deregulation hiding as a community bank bill. This package is made up 24 Republican bills with just 2 Democratic bills. Tomorrow, Madame Chair, we mark the 16th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act becoming law. 

That law was passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis when – and in case my Republican colleagues have forgotten – millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings. But this package ignores those lessons and rolls back a long list of safeguards and oversight of the largest banks. 

Importantly, the nation is grappling with an affordability crisis and surge in financial scams and fraud costing consumers tens of billions of dollars.   This is all made worse because Trump has shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.   Voting for H.R. 6955 would add insult to injury by hampering a future CFPB from issuing new rules, such as reining in debt collectors or abusive medical debt practices—but maybe that is the point.

Furthermore, Madame chair, this bill ignores the lessons from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other regional banks just three years ago. Those large regional banks failed after Congress rolled back capital, liquidity and other rules specifically for those banks. 

Nevertheless, this bill lets even more of these large banks escape critical safeguards risking more failures.  In fact, the sponsors of this bill were so zealous to raise thresholds, they increased one threshold that will aid bad actors who commit fraud against a bank.

You can’t make this up. There’s a provision that will increase the amount individuals can defraud a bank by, and then turn around and obtain subsidized financing from the government for those assets from the failed bank.  H.R. 6955 also falls well short of what we know can be done on a bipartisan basis to promote, preserve, and enhance access to banking services for Main Street communities. 

I have a letter led by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and signed by organizations all over the country, including Alabama, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah.  They are opposed because the bill would, quote:

“sharply limit monopoly and competition review for mergers involving roughly 96% of all banks, compress merger review and sideline community evidence and  “weaken fair lending accountability.”

Americans for Financial Reform and other leading consumer group organizations wrote a letter saying, quote:

“This radical legislation would compound an already aggressive deregulatory spree…. Taken together, these changes would be more damaging than the sum of their parts, leaving the financial system dramatically weaker and more vulnerable to instability and crisis.”

Now, Republicans made a few technical changes at the request of Trump regulators, but let me give you another example what they didn’t change.  Wells Fargo, which many of you may remember created millions of fake consumer accounts and has been the subject of countless enforcement actions for consumer harm, like discrimination and anti-money laundering deficiencies, would have a new tool to delay future enforcement actions even when consumers have been harmed. 

Madame Chair, instead of letting Wall Street put Americans and our economy at risk again, we should be working together to address the affordability crisis caused by Trump’s failed economic policies and endless war with Iran. 

So, I urge Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back.