Texas 2011 - 82nd Regular

Texas House Bill HCR94 Compare Versions

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Old	New	Differences
1	1	82R17922 CBE-D
2	2	By: Flynn, Chisum, et al. H.C.R. No. 94
3	3	Substitute the following for H.C.R. No. 94:
4	4	By: Pitts C.S.H.C.R. No. 94
5	5
6	6
7	7	HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
8	8	WHEREAS, The banking and insurance industries are essential
9	9	to the continued growth and well-being of Texas, serving as
10	10	important hubs of economic activity for communities throughout the
11	11	state; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
12	12	Act not only poses a major threat to these businesses, but will
13	13	serve as a destructive influence on the entire state; and
14	14	WHEREAS, The Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed by the United
15	15	States Congress on July 21, 2010, consists of 2,300 pages of new
16	16	statutory language that will result in the promulgation of more
17	17	than 250 new federal regulations; supporters of the legislation
18	18	claim that it will equip federal regulators with powers to prevent
19	19	another financial debacle like the country experienced from 2007
20	20	through 2009, but in reality, the bill sets up a regulatory regime
21	21	that allows "Too Big to Fail" banks and Wall Street to continue to
22	22	avoid adequate scrutiny while it punishes traditional Texas banks
23	23	that had nothing to do with the most recent crisis; and
24	24	WHEREAS, A new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is
25	25	established to regulate all consumer financial services in the
26	26	United States; the bureau will receive hundreds of millions of
27	27	dollars in annual funding from the Federal Reserve System and is not
28	28	subject to congressional oversight through the appropriations
29	29	process; it will have the power to decide what types of financial
30	30	products can and cannot be offered, and it will have the power to
31	31	set prices for consumer loans, mortgages, and small business loans;
32	32	and
33	33	WHEREAS, If this new agency were to become what its advocates
34	34	have envisioned, it will be at least as large as the Internal
35	35	Revenue Service; Texas banks will have fewer and more expensive
36	36	products to offer to their customers, and the credit needs of rural
37	37	and urban Texans will be determined by an agency in Washington; and
38	38	WHEREAS, The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection will
39	39	also greatly increase compliance costs for Texas community banks;
40	40	smaller banks will see their compliance and employee costs increase
41	41	by tens of thousands of dollars on an annual basis, resulting in
42	42	millions of dollars in loans lost to area communities; furthermore,
43	43	these new costs will drive down profitability and lead to the
44	44	consolidation of the banking industry; fewer banks means less
45	45	credit and fewer choices for borrowers across the state; and
46	46	WHEREAS, Even before the effective date of the Dodd-Frank
47	47	Act, federal bank regulators have been examining banks and imposing
48	48	sanctions that are harming credit availability all over Texas; in
49	49	the name of consumer protection and fair lending, the federal
50	50	agencies are curtailing services, such as overdraft protection,
51	51	that are wanted by Texas bank customers; the limitation on bank
52	52	service fees will increase costs for all consumer services and lead
53	53	to the end of offerings such as free checking; during fair lending
54	54	examinations, banks are being told that discrepancies of a few
55	55	cents in the charging of interest rates can lead to referrals to the
56	56	U.S. Department of Justice; this has led to a chilling effect and a
57	57	reluctance by community banks to make small consumer and business
58	58	loans; and
59	59	WHEREAS, Another example of federal intervention in the
60	60	pricing of financial products is the rate caps placed on
61	61	interchange fees for debit cards; the Dodd-Frank Act takes the
62	62	pricing of these services from the marketplace and places it in the
63	63	hands of the Federal Reserve; the most recent proposal from the
64	64	Federal Reserve would so severely restrict interchange fees that
65	65	banks and credit unions will be unable to cover the full costs
66	66	associated with providing checking accounts and debit cards; as a
67	67	result, banks and credit unions will be forced to cease offering
68	68	some debit and checking products and to increase fees on those they
69	69	continue to provide; lower income Texans who have obtained greater
70	70	access to affordable retail banking, partly because of interchange
71	71	fees, will have less access to traditional institutions and be
72	72	forced to go back to the less regulated "shadow" banking system with
73	73	its increased costs; now, therefore, be it
74	74	RESOLVED, That the 82nd Legislature of the State of Texas
75	75	hereby respectfully urge the Congress of the United States to
76	76	repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
77	77	Act; and, be it further
78	78	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
79	79	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
80	80	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
81	81	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
82	82	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
83	83	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
84	84	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.