Our plan fixes everything that is wrong about the current financial regulatory approach of Dodd-Frank. Over the past seven years, Dodd-Frank's policies have gutted the part of our financial industry that best serves families, consumers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs with competitive services and access to credit and capital--our community banks. 

Community banks were not the cause of the 2008 housing and economic crisis. However, due to the regulatory creation of Dodd-Frank—Washington’s response to the crisis—small community financial institutions have borne the brunt of its effects. They have been unfairly punished with burdensome regulations that have increased paperwork and reduced productivity and services in too many of our communities.

If "too big to fail" was the narrative from the fallout of the '08 crisis, then "too small to succeed" is the fallout from Dodd-Frank. In 2015, the president of the American Bankers Association estimated that our country has lost one community bank or credit union per day since Dodd-Frank became law.

The nationwide reduction in community banks has hurt main street, all the while the biggest banks on Wall Street have only gotten bigger. Our plan would give regulatory relief to well-capitalized community banks, and this voluntary “off-ramp” concept is available to all banks willing to comply with the requirements. However, it is unlikely that the nation's largest, most complex institutions will be able to justify the dramatic increase in equity capital necessary to achieve the regulatory benefits. 

The recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the CHOICE Act confirms this, stating: "CBO expects that most of the financial institutions that chose to maintain a leverage ratio at 10 percent would be those with assets below $10 billion, commonly known as community banks." And that "the eight large banks headquartered in the United States that are characterized as globally systemic important banks (G-SIBs) would not make the election because they would have to raise much more capital."

Our Committee has spent hundreds of hours in over 140 hearings and in meetings with regulators and industry experts to put together strong legislation that will reverse the Dodd-Frank institutionalization of ‘too small to succeed’ and ‘too big to fail.’

Our bill also will increase government accountability by providing structural reforms to the least accountable federal agency—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—making it subject to appropriations and requiring comprehensive cost-benefit analysis for rule-makings. The American people want economic growth and they want a government that is accountable to them, the Financial CHOICE accomplishes both of these goals.

 
Representative French Hill