Financial Services/Housing
As a member of the powerful House Committee on Financial Services, one of Hinojosa's top priorities is ensuring that his constituents and all other individuals across the country have access to an efficient, effective, and transparent financial services industry, including financial institutions and the capital markets. This is of the utmost importance given the role the financial services industry placed in the current domestic and global economic crisis and the role they continue to play in the economic recovery.
One of Hinojosa’s long term goals has always been to draft and support legislation that protects his constituents from predatory lenders, payday lenders, and check cashers to encourage them to use more traditional financial services systems and products that may open doors to other wealth building opportunities, including the American dream of homeownership. Moving further to those goals, Hinojosa joined his colleagues in the House in passing H.R. 1728, the “Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009”. The legislation strengthens anti-predatory lending practices, hold creditors responsible for the loans they originate, and protect tenants who rent homes that go into foreclosure.
Hinojosa is an original cosponsor of, and played a key role in House passage of H.R. 627, the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. It prohibits exorbitant fees, such as fees based on method of payment and prohibits fees for going over the card limit unless the cardholder has specifically authorized over-limit transactions to go through. It also requires cardholders to be given 45 days notice of interest rate, fee and finance charge increases. President Obama has signed it into law.
Hinojosa joined his House colleagues in helping pass H.R. 2920, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2009. This tough pay-as-you-go law would require the government to offset changes in mandatory spending with either an increase in revenue or a spending cut somewhere else, to prevent runaway increases in the federal deficit.
Hinojosa is an original cosponsor of and played a key role in House passage of H.R. 3269, the “Executive Compensation Act of 2009”. It restrains executive compensation practices that encourage excessive risk-taking at the expense of companies, shareholders, employees, consumers and his constituents.
As Co-Founder and Chairman of the Congressional Rural Housing Caucus, Hinojosa has taken actions to reduce to the large degree the negative impact the current economic crisis is having on the housing market, while also shielding his constituents who live in rural America and remain in need of housing, both for purchase and rental... The goal of the Rural Housing Caucus is to improve the affordability, availability and quality of housing in rural America. Hinojosa authored a letter requesting that the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture fund rural housing programs to the highest levels as possible in the Agriculture Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010. The Subcommittee responded with an appropriations bill containing a good majority of funding levels Hinojosa requested. In the 112th Congress, Hinojosa is working to protect rural housing projects from severe budget cuts.
Below: Cong. Hinojosa helps students at Margo Elementary learn the difference between wants and needs at a Financial Literacy event.
As Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Financial and Economic Literacy Caucus, Hinojosa continues to promote financial literacy cause with outreach to his colleagues in the House of Representatives, to the private sector, to non-profits, community based organizations and most of all his constituents. There is a growing consensus that too many Americans lack the basic financial literacy skills to enable them to navigate our increasingly complex financial system, make informed financial decisions, and avoid abusive financial products and services. Studies consistently show that a significant number of Americans have inadequate knowledge about concepts related to personal finance and basic economics including budgeting, managing credit use and debt problems, reading and understanding credit reports, understanding the terms of a mortgage or vehicle loan, using and maintaining a checking account, and understanding the importance of saving for retirement.
Hinojosa believes strongly that improving financial literacy in the United States might help prevent a future credit crunch and reduce the percentage of citizens weighed down by a large amount of debt. Toward this end, House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit held a financial literacy hearing entitled “Improving Consumer Financial Literacy under the New Regulatory System.” Hinojosa played a key role organizing that hearing and chaired it for the majority of its duration. He continues to seek to find ways to improve financial literacy rates across the United States.
