José E. Serrano: “There are a couple of other speakers, so I will be very brief. This really has very little to do with the substance that…”

“There are a couple of other speakers, so I will be very brief. This really has very little to do with the substance that we are talking about, or that appears to be marijuana. It is about the fact that, whether we like it or not, there are States that have already legalized either recreational use, in two cases, or medical use in 22 States, and those situations require banking decisions and banking abilities. Jack Lew, Secretary of the Treasury, said at our hearing: Without any guidance there will be a proliferation of cash- only businesses, and that would make it impossible to see when there are actions going on that violate both Federal and State law. So an attack on the use of marijuana may be misleading here because what we are doing is really ignoring the banking aspect of this and the fact that there have to be some regulations and some issues put in place to do the right thing and to uphold the law, the banking laws and other laws. With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter).”