Political Quotes

“I want to thank Chairman Hensarling for his continued work on this, and I also want to thank my colleague and friend from Missouri, Blaine Luetkemeyer, for his important work on this issue. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be a cosponsor on this legislation because it is an important bill for regional banks in Illinois, but also around the country. The Financial Services Committee has spent a significant amount of time debating which banks should qualify as so-called community banks and regional banks when determining how to legislate regulatory relief. I have to agree that, as a bank starts getting larger, it starts looking less and less like a community bank. But both Republicans and Democrats have agreed that asset size should not be the sole characteristic for determining a bank's riskiness to the financial system. There are a number of banks that have successfully made use of the traditional community bank business model of deposit taking and lending that have grown in size. Some have grown substantially, and now they are able to serve more than one community. Congress should not punish these financial institutions with an asset threshold that even Congressman Barney Frank described as arbitrary. Our policies should encourage low-risk relationship lending so communities can benefit from institutions of different sizes.…”