Political Quotes

“I thank Chairwoman Waters for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the chairwoman for bringing up this bipartisan bill today and for maintaining bipartisan momentum in the areas where bipartisan agreement is achievable. Chairwoman Waters and her staff were instrumental in passing this bill in the last Congress and including it in JOBS 3.0. I would also like to thank my friend, Congressman Hill, for working on the Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act, the CLAW Act, with me. I am proud to support this bill, which passed with very strong bipartisan support in the last Congress, a 55-0 vote in the Financial Services Committee, a 379-4 vote on the House floor. This bill creates a commonsense safe harbor from Bank Secrecy Act liability for a bank that keeps an account open at the request of law enforcement. For background, law enforcement agencies sometimes send what are called keep open letters to financial institutions so that they can obtain critical evidence in investigations by following the money. While following these law enforcement requests is optional, agreeing to them does, in fact, create a technical violation of the Bank Secrecy Act. This complicates the decision for a financial institution that should be simple. This could, in fact, undermine our efforts to prevent illicit finance or money laundering.…”