Political Quotes

“I strongly share their concerns about the lack of relief from the burdensome Community Reinvestment Act. Let me share a few statistics. The CRA, first passed in 1977, took only two pages of bill language when first authored by former Senator William Proxmire. Yet our federal regulators have now promulgated more than 275 pages of regulations--in microscopic government type, mind you--governing this provision. As a result, what was meant to be a community based, largely voluntary program to infuse private capital into struggling areas has now become a massive, burdensome, and counterproductive federal mandate. According to one study, our financial community spends more than $1 billion each year, and 15 million man hours, complying with the CRA. The impact is particularly hard on smaller banks, which incur three times the compliance costs of larger institutions.”