Congressman Dan Kildee: GOP Bill “Takes Us Back” to the Same Conditions That Led to the 2008 Financial Crisis

Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05) today spoke at the House Democrats weekly press conference on Capitol Hill, leading efforts to oppose the Republican bill repealing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The bill, also known as the “Wrong Choice Act,” gets rid of consumer protections and Wall Street reforms designed to prevent another financial crisis. Congressman Kildee is the Vice Ranking Member of the Financial Services Committee. A video of the press conference can be viewed here.

“As the House considers the ‘Wrong Choice Act’ this week, I have one question: Have Republicans forgotten just how much pain the Great Recession caused so many American families?” Congressman Kildee said on the House floor in a separate speech today. “More than 8 million Americans lost their jobs. At least 11 million people lost their homes through foreclosure. American families lost trillions in wealth. Our nation’s unemployment rate shot up to 10 percent. And now Republicans want to pass legislation to take us back to the same failed policies that led to this crisis,” Congressman Kildee said.

Congressman Dan Kildee Speaks at a House Democratic Caucus Press Conference Alongside Caucus Vice Chair Linda Sanchez (CA-38) and Congressman Denny Heck (WA-10).

Yesterday, Congressman Kildee also spoke against the bill in the Rules Committee as the U.S. House of Representatives began consideration of the bill, saying the bill gave a “massive handout to Wall Street on the backs of hardworking Americans.”

Congressman Kildee’s remarks, as delivered at today’s House Democratic Caucus press conference, are below.

On H.R. 10, the “Wrong Choice Act”:

I am the Vice Ranking Member – the second Democrat on the committee – on the Financial Services Committee. We went through a markup of this so-called “Wrong Choice Act.”

If anyone thought that this legislation was a thoughtful, bipartisan attempt to try to deal with the real problems that we do see, and that we obviously need to work on in the financial sector, you're sadly mistaken. This is not a bill that deals with some of the problems that we see in smaller banks. We have ideas on that subject.

This is a highly partisan, hyper-ideological piece of legislation that takes us back to where we were, to the very same conditions that led to the financial crisis in the first place.

It completely eviscerates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It takes away all of its authority to deal with unfair and deceptive practices. It basically takes away any of the teeth that the Consumer Bureau has to go to bat for the American consumer. It eliminates an important provision of Dodd-Frank, and that is orderly liquidation authority. It essentially puts us back in the position that we were in before the financial crisis, where the only way to deal with a failing institution is to push it into bankruptcy and let investors, borrowers, consumers and the American economy take its chances, rather than use a far more orderly process intended to minimize the negative impact that a failure could have on the economy.

It ties the Fed's hands in making decisions about monetary policy, implementing essentially an automated formulaic system of determining interest rates, so that the thoughtful approach that the Federal Reserve has been able to take to help manage the economy would be significantly weakened. And I don't think anyone could argue that that is a step in the right direction, unless somehow you think that a thoughtless approach to this, an automated approach to managing monetary policy, makes sense.

It rolls back the Volcker Rule. It basically allows those big institutions to go back to the day where they could gamble with depositors' money for their own benefit, knowing that it was the federal government that was ensuring their investing strategies, their gambling with the depositors' money. Makes no sense at all.

This is one of those pieces of legislation that should be dead on arrival in the House. It ought not pass. Democrats were united in committee. It was all of the Democrats voted against this piece of legislation.

We offered thoughtful amendments that we thought would improve the bill. We had a long list of amendments. We got through 19 of them. Not a single one was given a single vote from a single member on the Republican side. Including, just for example, a very thoughtful amendment offered by Mr. [David] Scott of Georgia, that would simply have us, as a Congress, try to address the particular needs of unbanked individuals. Non-controversial. But because it was offered by a Democrat, they did not want to accept a single idea offered from any Democratic members of the committee.

I know Mr. [Denny] Heck offered an amendment that I think that dealt with the issues, as he pointed out, related to military members who have been the subject of predatory activity by financial institutions. Not even a thought that an amendment like that would be accepted.

So, you know, process is kind of boring. I get that. But it's the only opportunity we have ever to try to do anything in a bipartisan fashion. This is an ideological bill that puts the economy at risk; takes us back to the conditions we were under that led to the financial crisis; and it's a direction we ought to avoid.

With that, I'm sure we'll be happy to take questions.

On Infrastructure:

This is one of the moments of truth I think for Republicans in Congress to do their job and to not act as if they are in the bleachers for the President of the United States. They have a job to do and they need to step up and do it.

It's becoming increasingly difficult for us to imagine how we could work with this president on something as vital to all of us as infrastructure, because, and I don't think I'm making any news here – you cannot depend on what the President of the United States says.

So it's really difficult to imagine entering into significant discussions with him about how to structure an infrastructure bill when longstanding allies can't trust his word. Republicans in Congress can't trust his word. Even his own staff are contradicted by him on a daily basis.

You can't trust the word of the President of the United States. And so it's very difficult to negotiate with somebody like that. So it's a moment of truth for Republicans in Congress to decide that their loyalty to the people they work for, to the Constitution, to this country, has to come before simply being in a position of carrying the water for a president who is unstable.

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