Jeb Hensarling

Mr. HENSARLING

Mr. HENSARLING. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds just to say that, if the ranking member is supportive of a safe harbor, she has a funny way of showing it. I would remind her that there is no private right of action under RESPA. There is one under TILA. But under TILA, there is an exception, a safe harbor for unintentional violations and bona fide errors, which will be found in section 1640 of title 15. There is another safe harbor for good faith compliance with rule regulation and interpretation. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill), the sponsor of the bill.

Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga), the chairman of the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to say we certainly don't see a grace period from Mr. Cordray. We see ``I am going to be sensitive and read between the lines.'' So the worst charge here is this bill is redundant. This bill does nothing to constrain consumer rights, but what it does do is constrain trial lawyers who are going to take away home ownership opportunities. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), the chairman of the Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3192, the Homebuyers Assistance Act. It is a very modest act, and it also happens to be a very bipartisan act, that would bring some temporary relief to mortgage market participants who are attempting to secure financing and close on their homes. It will help allow there to be a transition period for a very complicated rule that has been promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that went into effect Saturday. Mr. Speaker, we want to make sure that hardworking Americans do not lose out on the opportunity for their portion of the American Dream, including home ownership, as this new rule is brought to bear. Now, let me be the first to say that as a Member of this body who finds very little good to be found in the Dodd-Frank Act, directing the CFPB to try to make disclosures more simple and more easily and readily understandable is a good thing. But the problem, Mr. Speaker, is in trying to integrate something called TILA, the Truth in Lending Act, disclosures with something called RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, two different acts. To try to reconcile those two, the CFPB promulgated a 1,888-page rule, complete with guidance. So now those who are involved in the marketplace trying to help finance homes are left with this behemoth to try to put into their computer systems, their IT systems, into training. Being able to streamline disclosures is a very, very important thing to do, but it is fairly difficult to do when there are almost 2,000 pages of complex, compound, complicated language. We know that when these new systems are put into place, Mr. Speaker, there can be glitches. There can be temporary setbacks. Sometimes the software doesn't quite work as intended. Just ask those in charge of the ObamaCare rollout. ObamaCare was on the books as law for many, many years before the rollout came, and it was a disastrous rollout. I have no doubt people were operating in good faith, but they rolled it out and it failed. So all over America, title agencies and mortgage lenders are having to change their software, having to change their process and procedures. We don't want low- and moderate-income people who finally put enough money away for a down payment to be set back in their attempt to get their mortgage. I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill), who is the author of the bill. It is, again, a very, very bipartisan bill. I want to thank him for his leadership. And before that, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) had been very, very engaged in this issue. I want to thank them for their leadership, because without it, again, what we are looking at here is people losing out on the opportunity to close on their homes. And so the bill is a simple bill. It says: You know what? For 4 months let's create a temporary, trial period and safe harbor for those who act in good faith in trying to implement this new 1,888-page behemoth rule. Let's allow a little bit of a transition period to hold these people harmless if they act in good faith. Again, Mr. Speaker, if they are acting in good faith. Yes, I assume the CFPB, which promulgated the rule, acted in good faith. But guess what, Mr. Speaker, they violated the law in rolling out this rule, and yet they were held harmless in their so-called trial period. Can't we do the same for those who are trying to make the American Dream of home ownership come true? If we do not pass this bill, I am afraid what we will hear is what I have heard from different people back in my home State of Texas. What I heard from one Texas land title man is: No question, more conservative lending in sales volumes will result. This will impact both buyers and sellers. And the new rules could have a cost impact. Lenders may decide to raise fees to cover potential exposure. Another real estate individual in Texas went on to say large lenders have already announced they are not going to do one-time closings anymore due to the uncertainty. We are hearing all kinds of language, and that is one of the reasons that 255 Members of this body, Mr. Speaker, including 91 Democrats, wrote to the head of the CFPB asking him to do exactly what this bill would do. It is not just limited to the House side. Forty-one Senators signed almost an identical letter asking the CFPB director for this very short period of time for people who operate in good faith to be held harmless and not to be sued, not to be fined, not to be persecuted, so that the American people can enjoy their right of home ownership. It is a modest bill. It is a bipartisan bill. It is for the homeowner. I urge its adoption. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.

Mr. HENSARLING

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to honor Malakoff Elementary School of the Malakoff Independent School District from the Fifth Congressional District of Texas for excellence in education. Malakoff Elementary School was named to the United States Department of Education's 2015 Blue Ribbon Schools Program, which: ``recognizes public and private elementary, middle, and high schools where students perform at very high levels or where significant improvements are being made in students' levels of academic achievement.'' Malakoff Elementary School's performance illustrates the commitment and dedication of the school board, administrators, teachers, and staff who provide students with a quality education. The school district, parents, students, and community should be applauded for this achievement. Mr. Speaker, as the representative for the Fifth Congressional District of Texas, I would like to commend Malakoff Elementary School for their continued educational achievements.

Mr. HENSARLING

Mr. HENSARLING. Madam Speaker, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, as a people, we have no more sacred values; and the right to life is foremost among these. Recently, shocking, appalling, horrific videos have come to light that show senior employees at Planned Parenthood casually discussing the harvesting and selling of organs of aborted children in ways to alter their procedures in order to ``obtain intact fetal cadavers,'' which they refer to as ``line items.'' In perhaps the most chilling video, we see one of these so-called intact fetal cadavers with its heart still beating. Madam Speaker, its heart was still beating. Madam Speaker, whether one considers themselves pro-life or pro- choice, can we not agree that the harvesting and trafficking of baby organs violates the sanctity with which every child created in the image of God is entitled to? How can a fair, civilized, and compassionate society come to any other conclusion? Madam Speaker, today I rise to plead with my colleagues to speak up for the voiceless and the defenseless by voting to deny Planned Parenthood further taxpayer subsidies for the harvesting of baby body parts.

Mr. HENSARLING

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. Now, the President says it is a good deal; and you know what, he is right. It is a very good deal for Iran; but it is a very bad deal for America. I fear, in his rush to try to build a legacy, the President has clearly given up far too much for far too little. He has done this at the expense of our security, as well as the security of our friend Israel and other U.S. allies. Mr. Speaker, this is a deadly serious matter. The first thing the President does in his agreement with Iran is to give them some startup capital. An estimated $120 billion held abroad will now be repatriated back to Iran's central bank, $120 billion to a regime whose Supreme Leader, to this day, calls for the annihilation of Israel, a regime that still chants ``death to America,'' a regime that has put bounties on the heads of American soldiers and has the blood of American citizens on its hands, a regime whose sponsorship of Hezbollah has left our closest ally in the region, Israel, with 80,000 rockets trained on it. In sum, it is a regime that simply represents the world's largest and most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism. Now, President Obama would have us believe that waiving sanctions against this regime would make the world safer, but this is the very same President that dismissed the Islamic State as the JV team, and we see what that has gotten us. This is simply not an administration whose assessment of national security threats is credible, and the stakes involved with a nuclear Iran leave zero room for error. In truth, Mr. Speaker, I fear it is we who sent the JV team to negotiate with Iran. Sadly, they were outplayed, outmaneuvered, and outwitted; and the result of their failure is the dangerous agreement we have before us today. It is such a flawed agreement that the President, yet again, tells Congress we have to pass something to actually find out what is in it. In other words, the President has utterly failed to provide the secret side agreements. President Obama once told us we cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, but under his deal, Iran's nuclear program will not be dismantled, only temporarily slowed, and that is if the Iranians don't cheat; but the President's team has failed to achieve anytime, anywhere inspections. Thus, it will be impossible to ensure the Iranians aren't cheating. Ah, but don't worry, Mr. Speaker, we are told the Iranians will turn themselves in if they cheat--really? In short, the President's agreement rewards Iran's terrorist-sponsoring regime with billions of dollars in relief without any guarantee of compliance. When you look at the record, Mr. Speaker, I don't trust this administration. I don't trust the Iranians. Why would we ever trust the two together? For the sake of our national security, I urge all of my colleagues to reject this flawed, dangerous agreement.

Mr. HENSARLING

Mr. HENSARLING. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HENSARLING. It is, in some respects, deja vu all over again. It is dangerous for government to have one view of risk--one view of risk. The regulators told all the banks that there was virtually no risk in mortgage-backed securities, no risk in sovereign debt, so you don't have to reserve practically any capital against those. Think Fannie, Freddie, and Greek bonds, and it almost brought down the entire national financial system, and we are obviously repeating the same mistake. So I appreciate the gentleman from Arizona for his observation.

Mr. HENSARLING. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for his, regrettably, accurate observation. I try not to question the motives of my colleagues, but something is awry when something goes through the House unanimously, and then just in a matter of a weeks to a couple of months later, all of a sudden, it becomes a very divisive issue. My fear is that the left hand doesn't always know what the far left hand is doing. The far left hand has decided that Dodd-Frank is sacred text, notwithstanding the fact that, 5 years later, we understand that free checking has been cut in half; 5 years later, we understand that bank fees are going up; 5 years later, we understand the ranks of the unbanked and the low- and moderate-income people who need to be able to have access to credit--when you need $500 to repair your car to get to work on Monday, you need $500 to repair your car to go to work on Monday. Yet, for many, it is clear that Dodd-Frank has become a matter of brand protection, of ideology; and it really doesn't matter how many people suffer. That is so sad. I have strong thoughts on the matter, but I will sit down and reason in good faith and compromise policy in order to advance principles on behalf of the American people. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman. Again, Republicans were frozen out. It was what Democrats wanted to do so they can own this particular bill that, again, is making America less stable. It makes it less stable because the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer. Dodd-Frank has concentrated more financial assets in fewer institutions. It is a pillar of the President's economic program that is causing working families to have stagnant paychecks and lower bank accounts, that is, assuming they have a bank account, because the ranks of the unbanked has increased. It has made us less free. We have one national consumer credit czar who decides now. It is Washington. Washington decides whether or not you can have a credit card. Washington decides whether or not you can have a mortgage. Washington now decides whether or not you can get a small business line of credit. I haven't even talked about this thing called the Financial Stability Oversight Council that, for all intents and purposes, now has the ability to control huge swaths of our economy by defining vague terms and systemic risks.

Mr. HENSARLING. Well, before I do, Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

Mr. HENSARLING. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. HENSARLING. A little over 60 percent, 5 years later; but in some respects, nothing is finalized because, when we think about being less free, in many respects, Dodd-Frank isn't even a law. Dodd-Frank is a license to unelected, unaccountable Federal bureaucrats to create discretionary results that they can change at their discretion. Even the rules that are ``finalized,'' which is kind of a Washington term, you still don't have something that is predictable, that you can count on, and so it has led to all of these abuses. When you think about the people who have run our VA, the people who did the rollout for ObamaCare--a healthcare system that people didn't want, they couldn't afford, and on a Web site that didn't work--all of a sudden, we are entrusting them to decide whether or not we can get a credit card, whether or not we can get a mortgage. In that respect, no rule is particularly finalized.

Mr. HENSARLING. It is a very important point because America has always been the land of the risk taker, the hard worker, the big dreamer, the entrepreneur. Now, what we are seeing in America today, because of Dodd-Frank and the Obama regulatory tsunami, is that we are having new business startups at their lowest level in over a generation. That means, increasingly, our garages are full of old cars, as opposed to new startups. Economic growth is something that compounds. If you don't have economic growth and American families can't grow, again, they lose sleep at night worrying about how they are going to pay their bills, how they are going to cover their checks, what will their children's future be? That is for those who still have checking accounts because another result of Dodd-Frank is that bank fees have gone up. As bank fees have gone up, the unbanked, lower- and moderate-income Americans, those ranks have grown. According to the FDIC, 9 million households don't have a checking or savings account; and that is because account fees are too high or unpredictable, most of this courtesy of Dodd-Frank. Another way it hurts hard-working American families is this Orwellian-named Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where there is now one national credit nanny, has come up with a rule called the qualified mortgage rule that the Federal Reserve says, once fully phased in, one-third of Black and Hispanic borrowers will find themselves disqualified for not meeting Washington's rigid one-size- fits-all debt-to-income requirements. We are losing our entrepreneurs. We are losing our small businesses. Low- and moderate-income people are falling behind because Dodd-Frank didn't keep the promise of lifting the economy.

Mr. HENSARLING. I was here 5 years ago, and it is funny and reminiscent that Senator Dodd, the coauthor of Dodd-Frank--the Dodd of Dodd-Frank--said at the time: ``No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.'' He said this in 2012. Here we are, 5 years later, and we know how it works. We know it is a drag on the economy. We know that free checking has been cut in half. We know that bank fees have gone up. We know that we are losing a community bank and a credit union a day, mostly because of Dodd-Frank.

Mr. HENSARLING. It was never my intent to support the law in the first place. Under then-Ranking Member Spencer Bachus of Alabama, my predecessor, Republicans had put forward a different law, and it was about bankruptcy, as opposed to of bailouts. Instead, what Dodd-Frank did was codify bailouts into law. It codified this whole concept of too-big-to-fail institutions. I believe there is not one financial institution in America that is too big to fail. The American financial system is too big to fail, but not one particular financial institution. We offered a different law in the first place, which was totally ignored by the Democrats. At the time, they enjoyed a super majority; so we were left with this particular monstrosity that, again, is making the American people less prosperous. I thank the gentleman, and maybe we can get a comment from the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of the Special Order.

Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for his comments tonight, and I thank him for his leadership on our committee. Again, Mr. Speaker, it is the unhappy occasion of the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Dodd-Frank Act, again, weighing in at 2,300 pages. It is so sad to realize, as the gentleman from New Jersey pointed out, that so many of the promises that were made have not been kept and they have not been realized. Again, the big banks are bigger, the small banks are fewer, and our hard-working constituents--many of them--are worse off. Many of them have stagnant paychecks. And so many of them have smaller bank accounts. What they have seen is free checking cut in half in America, and bank fees have gone up. This is all because of the Dodd-Frank law putting an incredible mass of regulations upon our community banks and on our credit unions, those who serve our hard-working families and our small businesses. Regrettably, in so many different ways, we are less prosperous, we are less stable, and we are less free. I was there 5 years ago, Mr. Speaker, at the conference committee. Republicans had an alternative. We had a bill that, frankly, was written and filed before the Democrat bill was, but there was no willingness to negotiate, no willingness to discuss, no willingness to compromise. So we ended up with Dodd-Frank, and the American people are poorer because of it. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren), a very hard-working member of our committee, a gentleman who brings a lot of expertise to this committee on a number of matters, especially insurance, which is near and dear to the financial security of so many of our constituents, and I am happy to get his views on this anniversary of Dodd-Frank.

Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, there are a number of us who are gathered for a very important discussion tonight regarding the fifth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act. Before we do, there is another important anniversary that needs to be recognized in America today. For that, Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus). 65th Wedding Anniversary of Gene and Kathy Shimkus

Mr. HENSARLING. Once again, I thank the gentleman for his comments and for reminding us, yet again, that the narrative that the left has fostered is a false narrative. Mr. Speaker, we were told that there was this massive deregulation that somehow led to all of these bad mortgages and that the world was blowing up. Yet, as the gentleman from Illinois pointed out, for 10 years, we have had increased regulation. It has increased, I believe, by almost 20 percent more in regulations. You had Sarbanes-Oxley. You had FIRREA. You had FDICIA. We are very good at acronyms in Congress, but we had more and more regulation. It wasn't deregulation that caused the crisis. It was dumb regulation. It was dumb regulation by the government that was incentivizing and cajoling and mandating financial institutions to loan money to people to buy homes that they couldn't afford to keep. What a tragedy. What a tragedy to put somebody in a home they can't afford to keep. That is the cause. Fannie and Freddie at the epicenter, and the Dodd-Frank bill was totally silent on the issue--totally silent on the issue--and people suffered. People suffered. I still remember my friends on the other side of the aisle said let's roll the dice a little on this affordable housing goal of Fannie and Freddie. Well, the dice got rolled, and the American people lost, and we had the great American financial crisis. Now they are doubling down. Even more regulatory burden dragging down our financial institutions, making us less stable, taking away our freedom and prosperity. That is just wrong. That is why we have to commit ourselves: No more. It is time that we have to replace this law. Five years later, it is obvious. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Pittenger) to hear his views on Dodd-Frank as well.

Mr. HENSARLING. The gentleman is obviously a quick study, but it doesn't take long when you speak to your constituents to realize, again, they are still hurting in this limping economy. When one looks at the President's economic program, it is really based on a couple major pillars. It is based on his healthcare program, ObamaCare, but it is also based on Dodd-Frank; and in many ways Dodd- Frank is to household finances what ObamaCare is to household health care, and it is harming low-income and working American families. It is hurting their ability to achieve greater levels of economic opportunity, greater levels of financial independence. Mr. Speaker, we have an economy that is limping along at about 2 percent economic growth, when historically we know it has been at 3\1/ 2\ percent. The economy is underperforming by 40 percent, and one of the reasons is because of Dodd-Frank. You can ask any person who is out there--an entrepreneur, small-business person who is helping create jobs--and they will tell you about this drag that the sheer weight, volume, complexity, and uncertainty of this tsunami of regulation is causing. I am very happy, Mr. Speaker, that someone that we have on our committee is a businessperson who has a history of creating jobs in my native State of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams) to give us his thoughts on Dodd-Frank as well.