Hon. Michael G. Oxley: “let me first of all say that it has been an excellent debate. I have great respect for the gentleman from Louisiana, as…”

“let me first of all say that it has been an excellent debate. I have great respect for the gentleman from Louisiana, as he well knows, and he certainly has expressed his position exceptionally forcefully and well to this body. Frankly, I have some empathy for his position, particularly on some CRA relief versus small banks. But I really do have major concerns with how this particular amendment treats insurance sales in banks. As I had indicated earlier during the debate on the LaFalce amendment, this issue, the bank sales of insurance, has bedeviled this Congress for a long, long time. It has basically kept this modernization legislation from passing Congress now for the last 20 years. We finally in our committee, after a lot of hard work and a lot of gnashing of teeth and a lot of long nights and negotiations between the parties, came to an agreement on how we would best deal with banks selling insurance; and we basically came to that conclusion that indeed, based on court decisions, the Barnett decisions and decisions by the OCC that indeed banks would be in a position to sell insurance. So the next question is how do we best protect the consumer and at the same time allow that kind of activity to take place.”