Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to oppose the resolution vacating the OCC's final rule on the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA. Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks has noted: ``The new Community Reinvestment Act rule was finalized for one reason--to promote more lending and investment in underserved areas--including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.'' The key changes the rule makes are these: It clarifies what counts for CRA credit, updates where activity is evaluated, evaluates CRA performance more objectively, and makes record-keeping and reporting timelier and more transparent. The OCC's efforts to improve the CRA framework began in 2017 with an extensive and deliberate process, engaging numerous stakeholders along the way. The OCC issued its advance notice of proposed rulemaking in 2018, and in December 2019, the OCC jointly issued a proposed rule with the FDIC, which received 7,500 comments. The OCC says those comments made it better and significantly different from the proposal. The status quo was failing. The OCC found that the regulatory status quo had failed to improve economic outcomes for underserved groups, including minorities and low- and moderate-income communities. The CRA regulatory process was broken. Acting Comptroller Brooks stated: In addition to not achieving the societal goals of the statute, the regulatory process around CRA was broken.…”