By: Flynn	H.C.R. No. 26

	HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
	WHEREAS, The banking and insurance industries are essential
	to the continued growth and well-being of Texas, serving as
	important hubs of economic activity for communities throughout the
	state; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
	Act not only poses a major threat to these businesses, but will
	serve as a destructive influence on the entire state; and
	WHEREAS, The Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed by the United
	States Congress on July 21, 2010, consists of 2,300 pages of new
	statutory language and increases the size of the federal government
	by creating 13 new regulatory agencies; supporters of the
	legislation claim that it will equip federal regulators with powers
	to prevent another financial debacle like the country experienced
	from 2007 through 2009, but in reality, the bill sets up a
	regulatory regime that allows "Too Big to Fail" banks and Wall
	Street to continue to avoid adequate scrutiny while it punishes
	traditional Texas banks that had nothing to do with the recent
	crisis; and
	WHEREAS, Established to regulate all consumer financial
	services in the United States, the new Consumer Financial
	Protection Bureau will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in
	annual funding from the Federal Reserve System and is not subject to
	congressional oversight through the appropriations process; it has
	been granted the power to decide what types of financial products
	can and cannot be offered, as well as the power to set prices for
	consumer loans, mortgages, and small business loans; and
	WHEREAS, If this new agency becomes what its advocates have
	envisioned, it will be at least as large as the Internal Revenue
	Service; Texas banks will have fewer and more expensive products to
	offer to their customers, and the credit needs of rural and urban
	Texans will be determined by an agency in Washington; and
	WHEREAS, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will also
	greatly increase compliance costs for Texas community banks;
	smaller banks will see their compliance and employee costs increase
	by tens of thousands of dollars on an annual basis, resulting in
	millions of dollars in loans lost to area communities; furthermore,
	these new costs will drive down profitability and lead to the
	consolidation of the banking industry; fewer banks mean less credit
	and fewer choices for borrowers across the state; and
	WHEREAS, Even before the effective date of the Dodd-Frank
	Act, federal bank regulators began examining banks and imposing
	sanctions that have harmed credit availability all over Texas; in
	the name of consumer protection and fair lending, the federal
	agencies have curtailed services, such as overdraft protection,
	that are wanted by Texas bank customers; the limitation on bank
	service fees will increase costs for all consumer services and lead
	to the end of offerings such as free checking; during fair lending
	examinations, banks are being told that discrepancies of a few
	cents in the charging of interest rates can lead to referrals to the
	U.S. Department of Justice; this has led to a chilling effect and a
	reluctance by community banks to make small consumer and business
	loans; and
	WHEREAS, Another example of federal intervention in the
	pricing of financial products is the rate caps placed on
	interchange fees for debit cards; the Dodd-Frank Act takes the
	pricing of these services from the marketplace and places it in the
	hands of the Federal Reserve; severe restrictions on interchange
	fees could leave banks and credit unions unable to cover the full
	costs associated with providing checking accounts and debit cards
	and force them to cease offering some debit and checking products
	and to increase fees on those they continue to provide; lower income
	Texans who have obtained greater access to affordable retail
	banking, partly because of interchange fees, would have less access
	to traditional institutions and be forced to go back to the less
	regulated "shadow" banking system with its increased costs; now,
	therefore, be it
	RESOLVED, That the 84th Legislature of the State of Texas
	hereby respectfully urge the Congress of the United States to
	repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection
	Act; and, be it further
	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.