Capital Access For Main Street PDF Download

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m., in Room 2360, Rayburn House Office Building. Hon. Tom Rice [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. Present: Representatives Rice, Chabot, Luetkemeyer, Hanna, Brat, Radewagen, Kelly, Chu, Hahn, and Payne. Chairman RICE. We are going to go ahead and proceed. I will call to order this meeting of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access of the Small Business Committee. Thank you to everybody, especially to our witnesses for being here. Five years ago, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law. With its passage came an onslaught of regulations. As we are aware, prior to Dodd- Frank's passage, there was a commonly repeated phrase of ''too big to fail, '' and a sense that our economy had been hurt due to large financial institutions inappropriate actions. This law was meant to curtail the inappropriate and risky actions of these ''too big to fail'' banks and increase financial stability and transparency while providing greater consumer protection. Today, we are not seeing the benefits promised by the proponents of the law. The economy is not rebounding exponentially. We are not seeing financially stronger and smarter banking. Instead, as we will hear from our witnesses today, the small guys, who did not create the problems, are the ones who are suffering. The losers in this equation are small businesses, both the everyday Main Street business that has trouble getting a loan, and the local bank that has to hire compliance officers instead of getting capital into the hands of local small businesses