Maxine Waters

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Chair, I yield the gentleman from New York an additional 30 seconds.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4015, the so-called Corporate Governance Reform and Transparency Act, would create an untested, inappropriate, and burdensome regulatory framework for proxy advisory firms, making it much more difficult for shareholders to obtain unbiased research used to make well-informed voting decisions about the companies they own. Institutional investors, like pension funds and mutual funds, typically invest money on behalf of hardworking Americans in a large number of public companies. In exchange for their investment, companies provide investors with shares of ownership and a say on important proposed changes to how the companies are run. These proposals may relate to who sits on the board of directors, how much executives are paid, environmental practices, employee minimum wage, and nondiscrimination policies. Shareholders often hire independent researchers called proxy advisory firms to help inform their voting decisions on the many proposals they consider each year. H.R. 4015 contains numerous provisions that would undermine proxy advisory firms and the shareholders that rely on them for unbiased advice. First, H.R. 4015 would essentially fulfill the wishes of corporate management by regulating proxy advisory firms out of existence. The bill requires proxy advisory firms to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and authorizes the SEC to deny applications on a whim. Additionally, H.R. 4015 would force proxy advisers to publicly disclose their internal proprietary research methodologies and voting policies, which firms invest time and money into developing. The bill would also require proxy advisers to hire a sort of compliance department dedicated entirely to the grievances of corporate management rather than the adviser's own shareholder clients. These burdensome requirements would deter new proxy advisers from entering the market and squeeze out smaller, cost-sensitive firms. As a result, shareholders would be faced with ever-increasing fees to obtain research from a shrinking universe of advisers. Second, H.R. 4015 would grant corporate management the right to review and weigh in on a proxy adviser's draft recommendations before the shareholder-clients, who pay for the recommendations, get to see a final report. If management raises a complaint that the adviser disagrees with, the bill allows management to get the last word by publishing its dissenting opinion in the adviser's final report. In other words, the bill is the equivalent of requiring that a teacher clear a report card with a student before sending it to his or her parents. Finally, H.R. 4015 is unnecessary in light of existing Federal securities laws. For example, some proxy advisers, such as the largest firm, Institutional Shareholder Services, are already registered and regulated as investment advisers under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. As such, they already owe heightened obligations to their customers; must make regular, comprehensive disclosures to regulators and the public; and are subject to periodic compliance examinations, among other legal responsibilities. Additionally, the SEC has already provided guidance on due diligence and oversight related to proxy advisers. H.R. 4015 would replace this well-understood guidance with a harmful and inappropriate regulatory regime that undermines investors' ability to simply exercise their shareholder rights. Tellingly, nothing in H.R. 4015 advances the bill's purported goals of ``fostering accountability, transparency, responsiveness, and competition in the proxy advisory firm industry.'' Shareholders hold corporations and their management accountable by casting well-informed votes on important issues of corporate governance, including issues of diversity. For example, a recent study by Ernst & Young found that corporate board diversity and gender pay equity were key themes in the 2017 proxy season. Specifically, Ernst & Young found that over half of the investors it interviewed included diversity as a board priority in 2017, and ``proposals asking boards to report on and increase their board diversity are among the top shareholder proposals submitted this year.'' H.R. 4015 would render these important accountability efforts ineffective, as the institutional shareholders driving governance changes would be less able to obtain the research needed to inform voting decisions. Now, I can imagine that Americans listening to this debate may get confused that Republicans, who have been singularly focused on repealing important safeguards and protections for America's consumers and investors, are now claiming that they are seeking to protect investors with these new rules, but, Mr. Speaker, if this bill truly helped investors, why have so many from all over America written letters to Congress opposing H.R. 4015? To name a few, the bill's opponents include public pension funds and government officials from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington. These investors joined a letter from Council of Institutional Investors stating that H.R. 4015 ``would weaken corporate governance in the United States; undercut proxy advisory firms' ability to uphold their fiduciary obligation to their investor clients; and reorient any surviving firms to serve companies rather than investors.'' Proponents of effective corporate governance, including Americans for Financial Reform, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, and Principles for Responsible Investment, have similarly written to oppose this bill. For example, the Consumer Federation of America wrote that H.R. 4015 ``would empower companies to bully proxy advisory firms into dropping their objections to management proposals or watering down their recommendations.'' Private institutional investors also agree that H.R. 4015 would leave shareholders reliant on biased information tilted toward the interests of company management. Sound corporate governance requires shareholders to have access to impartial information when voting on key corporate issues. If our Nation's investors, who provide the capital for businesses to grow jobs and our economy, are unable to hold corporations accountable, they will be increasingly reluctant to invest. H.R. 4015 would, thereby, hurt the very businesses it purports to assist. Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing H.R. 4015. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It is not enough that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle just voted to give the biggest tax breaks to America's richest corporations. They are back here now supporting the control and the dominance of corporations over our investors who need protections. The difference between us and them, they are for deregulation of Dodd-Frank and protection for consumers to support, however they can give it, the biggest corporations in America. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investments.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talked about what is happening in corporate America. They are dancing in the streets after that big tax cut that was just given by my friends on the opposite side of the aisle. As to just a couple of companies--or too few companies--that are doing the advising for these investors, it was just a week or so ago that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle came here representing one company, Berkshire Hathaway, where they were asking this Congress to allow them to charge higher interest rates on the most vulnerable people in our population, with high interest rates and the terrible foreclosure practices all over this manufactured housing that Berkshire Hathaway is selling to these most vulnerable people in our society. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Al Green), who is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. David Scott), a hardworking member of the Financial Services Committee.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record letters from the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, and the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems. California Public Employees' Retirement System Executive Office, Sacramento, CA, December 18, 2017. Subject H.R. 4015, The ``Corporate Governance Reform and Transparency Act of 2017''. Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Majority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Leaders McCarthy and Pelosi: On behalf of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), I write to express our opposition to H.R. 4015, the ``Corporate Governance Reform and Transparency Act of 2017,'' which is scheduled to be considered by the full House this week. CalPERS is the largest public, defined benefit pension plan in the United States, with approximately $346.13 billion in global assets, as of market close December 13, 2017. CalPERS manages investment assets on behalf of more than 1.8 million public employees, retirees, and beneficiaries. As a global, institutional investor that invests in more than 11,000 public companies worldwide, we rely on the integrity and efficiency of our financial markets to furnish the long-term sustainable, risk-adjusted returns that allow us to meet our liabilities. Although we support the House Financial Services Committee's focus on bipartisan ways to foster a system that promotes capital formation and maximizes shareowner value, we have several substantive concerns about H.R. 4015. Given the large number of public companies in which CalPERS holds voting shares, we use proxy advisory firms and other data providers to assist us with analysis of management and shareowner proposals and director elections. In providing these services to CalPERS, these firms are guided by our Governance and Sustainability Principles and proxy voting policies to efficiently provide independent research and analysis that helps to inform our voting decisions. While we are certainly in favor of ensuring that proxy advisory firms are well-regulated and transparent, we oppose efforts to create an unduly burdensome regulatory regime in this area. H.R. 4015 would create such a regulatory regime by establishing conflict of interest management requirements that are duplicative of existing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) authority. Currently, shareowners pay proxy advisory firms through contractual arrangements, and this provision of H.R. 4015 appears designed to fix a problem that does not exist among contracting parties. In addition, the bill would establish a process by which corporations have preliminary access to the proxy information that investors pay for under contracts with proxy advisory firms. At the same time, corporations that do not provide early access to their consultants' positions on items subject to shareowner votes would not be required to register with the SEC. The bill would also significantly increase proxy voting costs for investors and create additional barriers to entry for new proxy advisory firms. Finally, the bill's definition of ``proxy advisory firm'' makes it unclear whether the intent is to regulate the thousands of entities that provide advice to institutional investors or only the three or so that would be considered proxy advisory firms under this definition. Considering the SEC's limited resources and ever-increasing responsibilities for addressing a broad range of emerging challenges in our securities markets, it would be imprudent to impose unnecessary requirements on the agency. As an institutional investor that uses proxy advisory services, we oppose H.R. 4015. Thank you for your consideration of these views. Please do not hesitate to contact me if we can be of any assistance. Sincerely, Marcie Frost, Chief Executive Officer.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee.)

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Capuano), an invaluable member of the Financial Services Committee.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, they are frightened, absolutely frightened, that we could possibly be on the floor today negotiating with the opposite side of the aisle about investment advisers. They can't understand why it is that we have Members of Congress who do not understand how important it is to have someone protecting the interest of middle class workers all over America. You have heard the reference to the teachers, firefighters, garbage collectors, and on and on and on. These people work every day. They invest in their retirement and they expect their retirement to be taken care of, honored, and not to be basically undermined by corporate interests. So these investment advisers are extremely important to the investors of these retirement systems. Having said that, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4015 is simply the latest effort by Republicans to check off every item on the corporate wish list before the holidays. The bill would empower corporate management at the expense of institutional shareholders, like our Nation's public pension plans, by allowing corporations to unfairly influence proxy voting recommendations. Because of the size of their portfolios, public pension plans who may hold shares in thousands of companies must rely on proxy advisers to provide independent research and voting recommendations on the merits of proposals. Without the work of proxy advisers, institutional investors would, in practical terms, be left voiceless on corporate matters that are important to them, including governance, board compensation, executive pay, and environmental sustainability. H.R. 4015 would give corporate management the unprecedented right to interfere in the relationship between institutional investors and the proxy advisers they hire. At its core, the bill is based on the false premise that shareholders blindly follow the recommendations of proxy advisers who themselves are beholden to activist interests. This belief is directly contradicted by reality. For example, in 2017, the largest proxy advisory firm recommended ``no'' votes on less than 12 percent of say-on-pay proposals, which are nonbinding votes on executive compensation practices required under the Dodd-Frank Act. That means they sided with company management 88 percent of the time. When it comes to director elections, the largest proxy firm voted ``yes''--``yes'' votes for 90 out of 100 directors. Proxy advisers understand that the vast majority of companies' proposals are good for shareholders, but not for all. Mr. Speaker, I ask for a ``no'' vote on this misdirected bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following letters: Americans for Financial Reform, Washington, DC, December 18, 2017. Dear Representative: On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), we are writing to urge you to vote against H.R. 4015, the ``Corporate Governance Reform and Transparency Act of 2017'', which will be considered on the House floor this week. By placing an excessive and unnecessary regulatory burden on proxy advisory firms, this bill would unfairly disadvantage shareholders as compared to firm management, and raise serious First Amendment concerns as well. AFR joins major representatives of shareholders such as the Council of Institutional Investors (CII) and the California Public Employee Retirement System (CALPERS) in opposing this bill. H.R. 4015 would establish a new Federal regulatory scheme for proxy advisory firms. These firms provide institutional investors, including pension funds, with the research and information they need in order to exercise their voting rights as shareholders. The regulations proposed in H.R. 4015 would require proxy advisory firms to provide the management of public companies with detailed voting recommendations relevant to their firms before these recommendations were shown to shareholders who paid for proxy advisory services. Advisory firms would also be required to resolve any complaints from firm management, and employ an ombudsman to ensure that such complaints were addressed. If complaints were not resolved to the satisfaction of firm management, then the full text of complaints from companies would be included next to voting recommendations in proxy advisory reports. Regulations would also mandate extensive disclosure requirements for the details of proxy advisory methodologies, reducing incentives to invest in developing such methodologies. The costs of this regulatory regime would be passed on to investors and pension funds that use proxy advisory services. The regulatory scheme is a transparent attempt to weaken if not eliminate the independence of proxy advisory firms from firm management by placing sharp restrictions on their expression of opinions which differ from those of firm management. Besides raising First Amendment issues, this improperly restricts the ability of shareholders to obtain independent views on how they should exercise their voting rights. This legislation cannot be justified, as some have attempted to do, by any analogy to the regulation of credit rating agencies. Proxy advisory services do not face a fundamental conflict of interest in their business model because they are not paid by securities issuers while providing certification of securities quality to securities investors. They also have not been implicated in massive fraudulent behavior that contributed directly to a global financial crisis. Further, proxy advisory services are clearly recognized as providing opinions regarding voting decisions, in a context where many other such opinions are available, rather than being entities that certify the quality of securities. Any concerns about the independence of proxy advisory services can be addressed by simply requiring such services to register as investment advisors under the Investment Advisors Act. The radical regulatory scheme laid out in H.R. 4015 goes far beyond anything even mentioned in the recent Treasury Department report on capital markets, which examined the issue of proxy advisory firms and recommended only that regulators engage in ``further study and evaluation of proxy advisory firms, including regulatory responses to promote free market principles if appropriate.'' The regulatory scheme in H.R. 4015, besides being misguided in other ways, certainly does not promote free market principles. The effort in H.R. 4015 to eliminate the independent voice of proxy advisory services should be rejected. We urge you to vote against it. For more information please contact AFR's Policy Director, Marcus Stanley. Sincerely, Americans for Financial Reform.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to talk about what is happening in this country with this administration at this time. It is so related to what we are trying to explain about what this bill attempts to do. First of all, let me just share with you that committee Democrats have made repeated attempts to follow the Trump money trail and investigate the suspicious financial dealings of the President, his immediate family and his associates, including their possible involvement in illicit Russian financial schemes. Since March, Democrats have written six letters--two to committee Chairman Hensarling, one to Deutsche Bank, one to Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan, two to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and another to Deutsche Bank's external counsel, requesting their cooperation in exposing the scope of Russian influence on the Trump administration. I have also written two letters on my own--one to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, another to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, regarding the Department of Justice's investigation into Deutsche Bank's Russian mirror trading scheme. On March 10, 2017, committee Democrats called on Chairman Hensarling to use the full range of the committee's investigative powers to examine Deutsche Bank's Russian money laundering operation and assess the integrity of the U.S. Department of Justice's ongoing investigation into the scheme, given the Trump administration's conflicts of interest in the matter and the revelations of Attorney General Sessions' communications with the Russian Ambassador. Chairman Hensarling failed to respond. We have heard nothing from our chairman. On May 23, 2017, committee Democrats sent a letter to Deutsche Bank's chief executive officer, John Cryan, requesting information on two internal reviews the bank reportedly conducted, the first on its mirror trading scandal and the second on whether the accounts of President Donald Trump and his family members held at the bank had any ties to Russia. Deutsche Bank's external counsel responded, stating that Deutsche Bank was unable to cooperate with the request, citing privacy concerns. On May 23, 2017, committee Democrats all sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin requesting that FinCEN provide any records to the committee that detail President Trump's financial ties to Russia as well as those of his family, his family members, and associates. Secretary Mnuchin failed to respond. It goes on and on and on. Letters were sent on June 21. We sent a follow-up letter to Deutsche Bank. On and on and on. What is important about all of this is Deutsche Bank is known and has been fined for many things, including money laundering. So, knowing that, what we are doing here is lifting oversight on Deutsche Bank, one of the fallen banks that would be covered by this bill. I think this is outrageous. I think people should know what this bill is all about and how it is going to put us at greater risk. We are dealing with limiting the oversight of banks like Deutsche Bank.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, first I would like to thank Congressman Green for his leadership. He is a member of the Financial Services Committee, who is dedicated to the proposition that we can and should work very hard to implement Dodd-Frank. He has done a wonderful job in representing all of the people of this country when it comes to this issue of whether or not we are going to allow the biggest banks in this country to revert back to the practices that they have been involved in historically, where it caused us to be into a situation that caused the recession in 2008 or whether or not we are going to honor the work of Dodd-Frank and the reforms that were instituted and be about the business of fairness and justice. I want to thank Mr. Green for his work, for his leadership, and for managing this most important legislation today. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3312, the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act. At a time when big banks are doing very well and the industry made record profits--more than $171 billion last year--and business lending has increased 75 percent since Dodd-Frank was signed into law, now is not the time to eliminate critical safeguards and reduce oversight of many of our largest banks. H.R. 3312 will roll back the enhanced prudential standards that currently apply to the 30 of the largest banks with more than $50 billion in assets. These are some of the most important rules in Dodd-Frank, like enhanced capital and stress testing that are critical to maintaining a safe and sound banking system that supports the broader economy. Proponents of this bill argue that Dodd-Frank imposed a one-size- fits-all approach to any bank over $50 billion. But the law makes clear that the Fed should tier and tailor its rules to differentiate between even these large banks ``on an individual basis or by category, taking into consideration their capital structure, riskiness, complexity, financial activities (including the financial activities of their subsidiaries), size, and any other risk-related factors that the Board of Governors deems appropriate.'' There is no one-size-fits-all mandate and the Fed has indeed tailored these rules. For example, the prudential rules for a trillion-dollar bank are much tougher compared to those that apply to a $250 billion bank and considerably more so compared to a $50 billion bank. Yet, after 18 months, this bill would exempt 30 of our largest banks from enhanced oversight, and it replaces the $50 billion threshold with a cumbersome, discretionary process led by the Federal Reserve along with the FSOC. We have a similar process for designating non-bank financial bank companies, like AIG, which have posed a systemic risk. So it is strange that Republicans are now pushing a similar approach after they repeatedly blasted the same FSOC designation process for being arbitrary, opaque, unfair, and unworkable. Those designations were heavily litigated, if not blocked in court, as these new designations by the Federal Reserve and the FSOC would likely be. Currently, there is only one non-bank designated by the FSOC through this process, so we should expect there would be hardly any designations through H.R. 3312. Who are these 30 massive banks that stand to benefit? These banks collectively hold more than $5 trillion in assets or one- fourth of all banking assets in the United States. Of the 30 banks, 12 of them are foreign banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Credit Suisse, and UBS. These banks have violated a wide range of U.S. laws, including anti-money laundering and unlawful trading practices, so I have no clue why Congress should even consider doing those banks any favors. For all the talk about helping out small community banks that serve our customers well in our rural and underserved neighborhoods, there is not a single provision that helps out these thousands of community banks and their customers. While some characterize this bill as helping ``medium-sized'' banks, the medium-sized bank has only about $200 million in assets or roughly 250 times less than the massive banks that benefit by this bill. More troubling, instead of helping community banks, the bill would make it easier for the largest banks to acquire smaller ones, accelerating a 30-year consolidation trend. Reasonable people can disagree on how best to dial up or down some of these enhanced standards and tier them more effectively--and I know my colleagues have good intentions--but this proposal goes way, way too far in reversing strong oversight of the Nation's largest banks. Even a Senate bill that resembles Chairman Hensarling's ``Wrong Choice Act'' is far less aggressive, raising the $50 billion threshold to $250 billion, although even that proposal would be damaging. Let me close by emphasizing that H.R. 3312 represents one of the largest rollbacks of sensible rules for many of our largest banks, including a dozen foreign banks, at a time when the industry is making record profits, and such a bill would hurt and make it harder for community banks to compete. For these reasons, I strongly urge Members to oppose this bill, H.R. 3312.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise to correct my chairman--I do not like to do this--however, I did check my mail, and I have discovered that when he responded to the August 11 letter, he let me know that he would not use his subpoena power to help us out. He did not respond at all to the March 10 letter.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill, which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended. My motion would prevent institutions that have engaged in a pattern or practice of unsafe or unsound banking practices and other violations related to consumer harm from being able to evade important consumer protections. When companies repeatedly exhibit indifference to consumer protection and demonstrate that they are incapable of complying or are unwilling to comply with U.S. laws and regulations, they should not be allowed to benefit from those bad actions. As I have already mentioned, under this bill, as amended, companies like Wells Fargo would be free to share or sell customer information with any company, with minimal reminders to their customers. We all know that Wells Fargo has engaged in illegal student loan servicing practices, inappropriate checking accounts, overdraft fees, unlawful mortgage lending practices, overcharging veterans for refinanced loans, enrolled customers in life insurance policies without their consent, delayed mortgage closing dates until after the expiration of the borrower's interest rate lock to levy additional fees, and charged over 570,000 customers with auto insurance policies they did not need, which resulted in at least 20,000 customers, including Active-Duty servicemembers, having their vehicles inappropriately repossessed. Companies like Wells Fargo are why I introduced H.R. 3937, the Megabank Accountability and Consequences Act, to make sure that lenders that have engaged in abusive practices face real consequences for their wrongdoing. It is time we truly hold companies that demonstrate a pattern of harming consumers accountable. These institutions must no longer be allowed to abuse hardworking Americans. Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of my motion, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, it is interesting how my colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle describe their consumers. These are people, they say, who don't want to be inundated with useless information. They are saying that the privacy information is of no use. It is interesting that Mr. Loudermilk said he read his privacy notice, unlike most other Americans who don't read their privacy notice. I think that is very interesting to describe himself as someone who read his privacy notice, but able to speak for all other Americans who don't read their privacy notice. What is very interesting also about his comments is he refers to the consumer groups as special interests, while he is representing the banks and the financial institutions, the real special interests. Why is it Representatives who come to this Congress to represent people who vote for them somehow see their responsibility to protect the real special interests, such as the financial institutions who have lobbyists running up and down these Halls every day, who make contributions to Members of Congress, rather than the consumers who are represented by the kinds of groups that I have taken time to describe here this morning, because these individuals and the average citizen do not have paid lobbyists from financial institutions and banks representing them here. So it is also interesting that Mr. Loudermilk talked about how many of these consumers are going to be buying automobiles because of the tax fraud bill that he is referring to that is being advanced by the opposite side of the aisle. The only thing that bill is going to do for consumers, which will hurt our economy, is create a $1.5 trillion debt. Well, he said that consumers were going to be buying more cars. Yeah, the wealthy will be, the ones who are given the breaks in this tax bill. The wealthy may be buying more automobiles, but the very people who are represented by these consumers that I have shared the information on this morning, they won't be able to buy automobiles because they are going to be harmed. It is only the wealthy, only those who are making extraordinary amounts of money, and corporations, that are going to benefit from the tax bill. I don't even know how and why he talked about it in the same breath that we are talking about our consumers being able to be respected with privacy information that they would get because we have laws that give them the right to have this information. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I have no other Members, so I yield myself the balance of my time to close. It is very simple. The consumer groups that I took time to help people to understand who they are and what they do, representing the consumers, are the folks who are concerned about people knowing their rights. This is what they work at doing. Those of us who align ourselves with consumer groups care about the average citizen. We care that the average citizen gets the kind of information that is going to make their lives much easier. The people on the opposite side of the aisle represent banks and financial institutions. We are not opposed to business, and we work with businesses in various ways. We are opposed to rip-offs. We are opposed to fraud. We are opposed to denying consumers the opportunity to know their rights. But those Members of Congress who come here and basically mimic and mock the consumers by talking about those consumers who wait by their mailboxes for privacy information certainly are not representing the citizens of their district. I can tell you this: When you take a look at who the real special interests are, who is representing the interests of the special interests, who in this House stands up for banks, financial institutions, and Wall Street and hedge funds, you look at the opposite side of the aisle, time and time again, and you will find them putting all of their time and their effort into representing those special interests. For those of us who stand on the side of the average citizen, yes, we align ourselves with consumer groups. No, we don't dismiss them as unnecessary people just messing around in the business of big business. These are the representatives, again, of people who don't have fancy lobbyists walking these Halls and following the Members of Congress, getting into their area and influencing them. Mr. Speaker, I stand today with our consumers. I applaud all of our consumer groups and I stand on the side of our consumers being able to know their rights and all of the work that went into providing this opportunity in law. I stand with them and I resist any effort by the opposite side of the aisle to deny the right of our citizens to be notified about their rights and their ability to opt out if they do not want their information shared with these unaffiliated groups. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud. I know that we are doing what our citizens want us to do, why they sent us to this Congress. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Clay's effort to make the bill better. He is absolutely correct, we have been attempting to work together to see if there was a way that we could deal with the issue at hand and absolutely ensure that our consumers not only have a right to information that explains to them what their rights are and how they can opt out when their information is being sold, really, to unaffiliated organizations. Mr. Speaker, just in case people are not following exactly what we are talking about when we talk about opt-out rights, let me draw your attention to the fact that you oftentimes are receiving loads of mail in your mailbox, everything from somebody who is selling pet food to clothing, to services, to all kinds of products, and you don't know why they are sending you all this junk. Well, they are sending you this junk because somebody sold your information to all of these organizations because you didn't know that you had not opted out. You maybe didn't know what your rights are. But citizens have a right to have that information, and they have a right to be respected and not thought to be simply throwing it into the wastebasket. It doesn't matter whether it is for all businesses in the United States or just for automobile dealers. It is about every citizen having the right to have their privacy protected and not having people sell their information to unaffiliated organizations that will cause them to be pressured or solicited over and over again and their mailboxes filled with information because their privacy information has been sold to one of those unaffiliated organizations. Mr. Speaker, I think that Mr. Clay is attempting to streamline the bill. I appreciate the efforts that he has put into attempting to do this, but this does not correct the problem. This undermines the efforts of all of these consumer groups that worked for years to get these notices sent to our consumers. Mr. Speaker, despite the fact that we have tried and we have worked and we have listened to each other, I would ask for a ``no'' vote on the amendment. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Ms. MAXINE WATERS of California. Mr. Speaker, I am opposed to the bill.