Date: 2015-11-18
Speaker: MAXINE WATERS (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker. I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1210. Today we are again wasting time on the floor discussing a bill that President Obama has already pledged to veto because it would undermine important financial reforms and put consumers and the economy at risk. H.R. 1210 would allow lenders to deal in the same kind of risky loans that sank Washington Mutual. Wachovia. Countrywide. and eventually the entire economy in 2008. The bill undermines the antipredatory lending provisions of the DoddFrank Act and virtually eliminates one of the most significant consumer protection rules implemented by the CFPB. The bill also revives an industry practice under which mortgage brokers can earn hefty bonuses by steering borrowers into riskier. more expensive loans regardless of whether they qualify for better rates. My colleagues seem to forget that we went through a terrible financial crisis. While we did spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue the banking system. millions of victims of predatory lending were left to fend for themselves as they were displaced from their homes and saw their life savings disappear. Many reforms in the DoddFrank Act ensure that the financial industry will never again be allowed to take the kinds of risks that drove us to national crisis. but the mortgage lending rules are designed specifically to protect families from financial crisis. The fact is that many banks. whether they held loans on their books or sold them off to investors. were able to profit from loans they knew borrowers could not repay. Rather than perform careful underwriting. many banks demanded high upfront fees and relied on rising home prices and private mortgage insurance to protect them from losses when borrowers inevitably defaulted. Banks also targeted families in financial trouble that owned their homes free and clear. offering them cashouts. refinancing with high origination fees and unaffordable terms. Refinances accounted for 70 percent of subprime lending in the 3 years before the crisis and ended up sapping the life savings from many families who relied on these products to pay for unexpected medical bills or financial hardships. Department of Justice investigations found that lenders specifically targeted. again. minorities with predatory loans. destroying a generations worth of wealth in many communities of color. Under the new mortgage rules. it is illegal to pay bonuses to brokers for steering borrowers into loans with bad terms. CFPB rules establish sensible underwriting standards so lenders are incentivized to design products that perform over the long run and make sense for consumers. In cases where banks want to make riskier loans with higher fees. they are allowed to do so. but the consumer will have extra protections if the loan goes bad. These include the right to sue for financial harm and a defense against foreclosure. The mortgage rules make good sense by protecting consumers while still allowing them access to credit and ensuring the economy can grow. These are exactly the types of regulations we should want from our regulators. and the CFPB should be commended for its success. Republicans continue to declare that the DoddFrank Act and the CFPB have been bad for the economy. During the last Republican Presidential debate. a rightwing group aired a commercial painting the CFPB as a communist bureaucracy and claiming the CFPB staff were responsible for denying loans to consumers. The facts show a much different picture. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal recently reported that industry analysts and experts agree that compliance costs arent the greatest challenge facing community banks. The same article notes that loan balances at community banks grew twice as fast as their large counterparts over the last year and that their profitability is much closer to larger banks than it was prior to the passage of the DoddFrank Act. The Mortgage Bankers Association recently revised their expectations for 2016 and 2017 to expect even more growth in housing credits. And this week. at the National Association of Realtors annual conference. industry economists pointed to a strong housing market. with high prospects for continued growth. It is time for Republicans to realize that DoddFrank and the CFPB are not the problem. They are the solution. Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.