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.