During a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Dan Meuser (R-PA) commended Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent for recent small business actions.
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00:00Great to be with you. Thank you. Boy, oh boy, I sure wish we had colleagues that were upset
00:04about the Biden 20% inflation and lack of wage growth along with that inflation
00:11and the high energy costs that were costing families throughout my district thousands of
00:17dollars. I wish we would have heard a peep about that. And yet we have just angry, angry voices
00:24over the potentiality of bringing manufacturing back to the United States that
00:29in fact hasn't even got into effect yet. It's nuts. Mr. Secretary, the ongoing litigation response
00:37to the Democrats' questions about the Treasury Doge team, is it true that they can find all the
00:42information, find all the available information there? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Also, regarding
00:53the beneficial ownership rule, which was a disaster for my small businesses, I mean, all of them,
00:59100% complained about it. The original intent of the Corporate Transparency Act was to root out bad
01:05actors. The previous administration, however, turned it into a massive data collection with over 50
01:12questions. Originally, there were four that outraged small business accountants, attorneys, anybody who
01:18had anything to do with it. In fact, only 20% of the small businesses were even able to comply by the
01:25January 1st deadline. And meanwhile, they were threatened with fines up to $500 per day and up
01:31to $10,000, small businesses. They were beside themselves. You listened to the small businesses and
01:37did something immediately to correct course, exempting U.S. companies from reporting. And my small
01:42businesses throughout my district, throughout Pennsylvania, applaud you for eliminating a needless
01:47bureaucratic reporting regime. So thank you. And Congressman, I'm just sorry that so many of them
01:52had to waste their hard-earned dollars either complying or preparing to comply.
02:00And losing sleep and everything else, and some even going out of business because they found it
02:03preposterous. Thank you. Let's talk about removing the ideological, subjective, even capricious
02:11regulators. Under the Biden administration, bank supervisors focused more on ideological concerns
02:21and less on material, bright-line financial rules versus the risks. How will you work with bank
02:28regulators to refocus supervision on bright-lines rules rather than issue unrelated to safety and
02:35soundness? Again, Congressman, a very important point. We could see that we had three, under the
02:43previous administration, we had three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history. Two weeks before that,
02:49the Financial Stability Oversight Council published a report that said that climate was the biggest
02:57threat to the financial system, not the deposit volatility, not over-leveraged bond portfolios.
03:04So we are promoting common sense back to basics. Yes, thank you. Okay. The efforts related to the removal
03:15of reputational risk as a basis of supervisory criticism. Can you comment on that? Yes, sir. Many people,
03:22many individuals, many organizations were debanked because of their political beliefs,
03:28and regulators use that as the litmus test, and that it is a very capricious category in bank regulation.
03:42So we have moved to remove that as a criteria. We believe that financial ratios are much more
03:50important than whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. Thank you. Yes, well put, and
03:58appreciate the fact that you see things that way, as should be seen. Capital requirements. Basel III endgame,
04:07of course, the G-SIB surcharge, and other proposed capital rules might put U.S. banks at an international
04:13disadvantage. What do you believe, if you've got an idea of the right level for capital requirements?
04:19Sir, we are examining that now, and we will weigh in heavily at the BIS and the other rulemaking entities.
04:31But again, this one-size-fits-all, and I believe one of the reasons we've seen the stagnation in many other countries is the
04:40regulatory framework, the very tight regulatory framework that they put around their regulated financial institutions.
04:48Thank you. I'm almost out of time. I'll yield back. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Thank you. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Torrey.
04:59Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.