John Sarbanes: “The Senator's amendment, I think, has an extremely important provision which says that if a banking institution wishes…”

“The Senator's amendment, I think, has an extremely important provision which says that if a banking institution wishes to go into securities or into insurance, which would be permitted in a comprehensive way for the first time by this legislation, that banking institution must pass the CRA test in order to do that. It is asserted that this is a, I think the language was used by my colleague, the chairman, a massive expansion of CRA. I take a very different view of that. It seems to me it is only keeping CRA abreast of the developments that are taking place with respect to financial modernization, because heretofore banks could not reach out and do--they did some of those activities within the bank of a very limited nature that had been permitted either by regulation or by court opinion but which were highly controversial and contested, and one of the things this bill is intended to do is to resolve those questions in terms of the structure of the financial services industry. Both the Senator and I are supportive of trying to do that. It seems to me that if the bank is now going to be permitted to move out to do these other activities, it is not some massive expansion of CRA.”