Andy Barr: “I thank the chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit for yielding and for his support…”

“I thank the chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit for yielding and for his support of this legislation. I also want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have joined together to support this bipartisan legislation that makes a small but sensible legislative correction to a regulatory policy that we have all heard from our constituents does not work as intended. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have worked with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) to reintroduce H.R. 1259, the Helping Expand Lending Practices in Rural Communities Act, or HELP Rural Communities Act, in this Congress. This legislation has now cleared the Committee on Financial Services in two consecutive Congresses with overwhelming bipartisan support. Furthermore, this Chamber approved identical legislation just 11 months ago by voice vote under suspension of the rules. Our Federalist system of limited government enshrines in the law the idea that State and local entities know their communities better than any centralized bureaucracy in Washington. The HELP Rural Communities Act reaffirms this commitment by addressing a bizarre situation resulting from the imposition of a one-size-fits-all government regulation that fails to consider the diversity of the cities, towns, and rural areas across America. The genesis of this legislation was a conversation that I had with a constituent, a third generation banker in rural Bath County, Kentucky.…”