Mike Flood: “I thank Chairman McHenry for yielding. I am pleased to speak in support of my bipartisan resolution, H.J. Res. 109, a…”

“I thank Chairman McHenry for yielding. I am pleased to speak in support of my bipartisan resolution, H.J. Res. 109, a Congressional Review Act resolution for the SEC's Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121, or SAB 121 for short. I thank Congressman Nickel and Senator Lummis for working with me on this resolution and for the chairman's leadership in getting this to the floor. This is something of a complicated issue, as you have heard today, so I will break it down into a few different components. First, I will begin by explaining what a staff accounting bulletin is. Staff accounting bulletins are technical accounting guidance for public entities. They are typically noncontroversial in nature and, importantly for this debate, are not rules. Guidance is not supposed to dictate a major change in policy. That is what our notice-and-comment rulemaking process is for. This specific bulletin effectively requires banks to put digital assets held in custody on their balance sheet. Simply put, that is not how custody usually works. As a Federal Reserve Chairman once said: ``Custody assets are off balance sheet, always have been.'' This bulletin upends custodial practice for banks, and it effectively keeps banks out of this market entirely. That is not good for consumers or investors. Next, let's talk about the process, as the chairman has already mentioned. There were two major process fouls by the SEC in issuing SAB 121.…”