Will Work to Protect Consumers and Small Businesses & Prevent Future Taxpayer Bailouts
Washington, D.C. – Representative Heath Shuler has been appointed to serve as a representative of the Small Business Committee on the conference committee on Wall Street Reform Legislation that passed the House on 12/11/09 and passed the Senate on 5/20/10. As a conferee, Rep. Shuler will be part a small group that works to reach a compromise on the different versions of Wall Street Reform passed by the House and Senate.
“I am honored and excited to be a member of this conference committee,” Rep. Shuler said. “For far too long, small businesses and consumers have not been adequately shielded from predatory loans and mortgages. I am committed to making sure hard-working Americans and small businesses are protected from predatory practices and from financing any future bailouts. Americans were rightly upset about trillions of taxpayers’ dollars going to prop up companies who made poor business decisions. I will make sure that this bill, in its final form, prevents future bailouts that U.S. taxpayers simply cannot afford.”
The House version of the Wall Street Reform and Protection Act, H.R. 4173, creates a new agency to protect consumers and small businesses by ensuring that bank loans, mortgages and credit cards are fair and understandable. Regulators would be given the authority to preemptively dismantle “too big to fail” banks for overly risky behavior before they threaten the U.S. economy. The legislation also gives the Securities and Exchange Commission new enforcement powers to oversee hedge funds, private equity funds and complex financial instruments such as derivatives. The legislation addresses excessive Wall Street salaries by allowing shareholders to have a “say on pay” and requiring independent directors on compensation committees.
The financial crisis that began in 2008 wiped out trillions of dollars in Americans’ retirement accounts and threatened to halt lending to U.S. businesses, including particularly vulnerable small businesses. Lax lending standards and weak oversight of the mortgage industry put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes in foreclosures. Rep. Shuler said, “As a member of the conference committee, I will work to hold large banks and Wall Street firms accountable, and prevent them from taking huge risks that caused massive shareholder losses and threatened to bring down the nation’s financial system.”
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