Sean Patrick Maloney: “It is long past due that we have a bill that brings our financial services into the 21st Century. We should be able to…”

“It is long past due that we have a bill that brings our financial services into the 21st Century. We should be able to compete with other industrialized nations where financial institutions have been allowed to merge and bring a wide variety of products and services to their customers. The bill allows the law to catch up with the reality of the international merger movement. Some of these mergers have taken place on the probability that Congress will finally act so that financial services will no longer be hamstrung by outdated restrictions of the 1930s. The bill allows financial institutions to merge, but prevents banks from merging with commercial businesses, and it requires functional regulation. Many of these changes are inappropriate and wrong, such as the medical privacy provision, and they should be changed in conference. While I will vote for this bill so that it can go to conference, my final vote will be contingent on a bill that has strong privacy provisions.”