Rich Neal: “sometimes in this Chamber we act as though we have a collective sense of amnesia. I want to stand in opposition to the…”

“sometimes in this Chamber we act as though we have a collective sense of amnesia. I want to stand in opposition to the Baker amendment today, an issue that the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) and I engaged in some years ago, as well, and with great regard for the gentleman's abilities. But I would like to point out that oftentimes we forget what has occurred here. In 1991, I offered this amendment on the House floor that would call for the opportunity for lending institutions to do a better job of keeping track of the loans that they made to small business and to small farms. At that time, I had the support of Andy Ireland, who was the ranking member on the Committee on Small Business, but in the end we were able to come to an agreement that allowed the call report to be amended so that we could do a better job of tracking this information as it applied again to small business and to small farms. Now, the FIDICIA act of 1991, in the midst of the magic words that some of us also might remember here, the credit crunch, where we had regulators arguing that there was no credit crunch, what the real argument was about was they were unable to secure the necessary data that accompanied that information so that we could have done a better job beyond anecdotal evidence, as highlighted by the previous speaker. We need to be in a position where we can secure this information so that we can act accordingly.”