Financial Services
The Financial Services industry is of critical importance to the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn. New York City is the financial capital of the world and I am committed to ensuring New York maintains that status. We cannot afford allowing over regulation to put U.S. financial markets at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. If that were to occur, jobs and capital would flee the US, never to return. As a member of the House Financial Services Committee, my biggest priorities include:
Repealing and Reforming Dodd-Frank
In July of 2010, the 2,136 page Dodd-Frank Act was signed into law. Dodd-Frank represents one of the largest government regulatory expansions in our nation’s history. The law gave unprecedented power to unelected regulators over our financial system, yet failed to address Fannie and Freddie Mac, a root cause of our financial crisis. These big-government policies will reduce credit availability for consumers and small business and harm our economic recovery. I am committed to vigorously monitoring the implementation of Dodd-Frank and repealing its massive excesses.
Protecting Consumers and Creating Jobs
On April 15, 2011, I introduced the Business Risk Mitigation and Price Stabilization Act (H.R. 1610). This common sense piece of legislation would protect consumers from unnecessary price increases and prevents companies from wasted precious capital that can be used for expansion and job creation. H.R. 1610 would ensure that regulators would not be able to require firms that use financial derivatives for legitimate commercial purposes, for example an energy firm protecting itself from a spike in oil prices, from having to post margin on their transactions. Posting margin would lead to firms having less money for investment. It would also lead some firms to avoid hedging their risks, exposing consumers to unnecessary price increases.
Reigning in New Bureaucracies
The Dodd-Frank Act created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency that will wield enormous power to restrict American’s access to financial products, yet be largely unaccountable to Congress. I am proud to have cosponsored the Responsible Consumer Financial Protection Regulations Act of 2011 (H.R. 1211) that will replace the single director of the CFPB with a five-member commission. The power that Dodd-Frank gave to the CFPB is simply too overwhelming to leave in the hands of an unelected czar.