Maxine Waters Slams 'Harmful' GOP-Backed Resolution Against Biden Treasury-Era Bank Merger Rule

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On the House floor, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) slammed S.J.Res.13, which reads as a "joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury relating to the review of applications under the Bank Merger Actt."

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00:00I thank the gentleman for yielding back and as to our Democrat colleagues' concern that this

00:07legislation and allowing for healthy mergers to happen in the banking sector would somehow

00:12diminish financial services or customer service would somehow be lost, it's actually the opposite.

00:19When you have healthy mergers among especially community banks or small regional bank acquiring

00:25a community bank that allows them to add scale, that allows them to invest in the very technology

00:33that provides the customers with better services, with better more innovative financial services

00:39and products.

00:40So far from losing customer service, this is a way for smaller institutions, regional banks

00:47to come together into combinations, invest in more technology to lower costs to help those

00:53customers to increase access to financial services in ways that they can better compete with

00:59the mega banks.

01:00And with that, I reserve my time.

01:02The gentleman in reserves, the gentlelady from California is recognized.

01:07Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker and members.

01:09I yield myself additional time as much as I may need.

01:14When we talk about rubber stamping, oftentimes people don't really know what we're talking

01:22about.

01:23What I'm saying is that we need to have better review.

01:29The OCC needs to be able to do everything possible to ensure that they know what these

01:36big banks are going to do and whether or not they're going to close down branches, whether

01:42or not they're going to lay off people, whether or not people are only going to be able to go

01:48to their telephone or to the internet somehow and try to get someone to talk to.

01:53Let me tell you what a definition of rubber stamping is.

01:59In 2023, the OCC approved, you won't believe this, 22 of 23 mergers within 60 days.

02:10That's 95% done in two months.

02:14Now, that's what you call rubber stamping.

02:16That's what you call the big businesses, big banks, being able to do whatever they want

02:23to do.

02:24All they have to do is get individuals like my friend on the opposite side of the aisle

02:31to stand up and support them with what they want to do.

02:34Again, I'll remind you

02:36that when these big mergers take place, they lay off people and they close down branch banking.

02:43That's why we have what we call deserts that exist in communities.

02:49Deserts because there are no branch banking.

02:52The big boys don't really care about branch banking.

02:57They're big and they are doing exactly what I have indicated in making more money by laying off

03:05more people having less services charging larger interest rates.

03:09I'm not on the side of big banks.

03:11I'm on the side of the people.

03:13And so, let me continue.

03:16The Republicans may claim this bill also prevents the OCC from updating its merger review procedures

03:24in the future.

03:25But why would they want to do that with just one banking agency?

03:28Perhaps they forgot that we have two other banking, federal banking agencies,

03:34in the Federal Reserve and the deposit, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

03:41Not only will this resolution freeze the OCC's review procedures in time and arguably prevent them

03:50from even providing guidance to applicants on how their review procedures work, but it allows other

03:59federal bank regulators, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve to update their procedures.

04:07This would likely lead to regulatory arbitrage where banks seek to merge with banks within a charter

04:15where the primary regulator has the weakest review standards.

04:19In fact, we saw this kind of arbitrage in the lead up to the 2008 global financial crisis,

04:28when the weakest banks would seek to get a charter from the weakest regulator,

04:33the Office of Thrift Supervision, OTS, until their banks failed and Congress shut down the agency in 2008.

04:44So I reserve the balance of my time.

04:46The gentlelady reserves.

04:48It had the title of my 카�leo.

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