Dusty Johnson: “we have minimal time remaining in this 105th Congress. The schedule is full. We have virtually the entire budget still…”

“we have minimal time remaining in this 105th Congress. The schedule is full. We have virtually the entire budget still to do, and other key issues are facing us. Frankly, we cannot afford to have this legislation held up with vetoes, veto threats, with ongoing, never-ending negotiations. So I think it is very important that we move forward with this legislation. A veto threat has been issued by the White House. If the CRA provisions are taken out--the ``CRA-light'' provisions--we will lose our bipartisanship, and it is a provision that is supported by the industry itself. It would appear to me that we need to move forward expeditiously with this legislation. We will be taking up bank regulatory relief legislation later on this coming week perhaps. There will be other vehicles in which to debate some of these extraneous matters dealing with the banking industry and, peripherally, the credit union industry. But I think it would be a mistake for us to be caught up in too many side issues on the underlying bill here. There is an absolute urgency that we move this bill forward. If we do not, the membership of some 20 million Americans will, in fact, be in very real and very great jeopardy.”