Melvin Watt: “I am going to rise in reluctant opposition to the rule under which these bills are being considered, because the rule…”

“I am going to rise in reluctant opposition to the rule under which these bills are being considered, because the rule provides that these bills will come here under suspension, which means that the bills cannot be amended in any way. It deprives us of the opportunity to offer an amendment to one of these bills, H.R. 4541, which a number of us have worked on throughout this process. Now I want to say at the outset that I am not going to vote against H.R. 4541, because I think it is a marginal improvement in the law. It is important to pass this bill, but we passed a bill out of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, a version of this bill which was substantially better than the bill that is coming to the floor, in one important respect. We have heard a lot of discussion here about driving U.S. commercial ventures offshore. There is one provision that has been dropped from the bill from the Committee on Banking and Financial Services that I believe will have the effect quite possibly of driving a commercial venture that is currently located in my congressional district offshore.”