On the recordMay 5, 2010
I rise to speak on the Hutchison- Tester amendment. This is an amendment that truly will help community banks. It will level the playing field for them. It is something I have been working on for several months, during all the consideration this bill has gone through in committee. This was one of the first things I wanted to attack. I am pleased we are going to get a vote very soon on this amendment, either a voice vote or a record vote. I know that with the bipartisan support we have, we will pass this amendment. I thank the cosponsors of the amendment: Senators Conrad, Murray, Burris, Brown of Massachusetts, Harkin, Shaheen, Cornyn, Johanns, Nelson of Florida, and Nelson of Nebraska, as well as, of course, Senator Tester and myself. We are trying to level the playing field for community banks. The underlying bill sets a way of assessing the banks by the FDIC. There has been flexibility in the past, but we are going to set in statute with this amendment that banks will be assessed based on assets minus capital. That should be the way to assess. Community banks, with less than $10 billion in assets, rely heavily on customer deposits for funding. But that penalizes these very safe institutions with these customer deposits by forcing them to pay deposit insurance premiums far beyond the risk they would pose to the bank system. Despite making up just 20 percent of the Nation's assets, these community banks contribute 30 percent of the premiums to the FDIC.…
