Dodd-Frank Turns 15: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead
Committee on Banking and Currency
2025-07-15
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Source: Congress.gov
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Committee on Financial Services will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. Today's hearing is entitled Dodd-Frank Turns 15, Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days within which to submit extraneous materials to the chair for inclusion in the record. I now recognize myself for four minutes for an opening statement. Good morning. Today's hearing is focused on reviewing Dodd-Frank's real world impact and its unintended consequences over the past 15 years. Our colleagues across the aisle often criticize today's banking system, but rarely do they acknowledge that it's a direct result of the policies they enacted after the 2008 financial crisis along party lines. Dodd-Frank was sold to the American people as a sweeping fix to prevent another crisis, yet over time it's become clear that this approach has not delivered as promised for Main Street. Instead, history shows that it punished community financial institutions through its one-size-fits-all mandates, shifted activity outside the regulated banking system, created new and unaccountable agencies like the CFPB, and prioritized duplicative compliance and regulatory issues, and most importantly, regulation by enforcement over actual consumer protection. These smaller institutions did not cause the crisis, but they've been forced to navigate new compliance burdens and divert resources away from serving their communities and toward satisfying Washington bureaucrats. The law created new agencies like the CFPB, which is operated with unprecedented autonomy and minimal accountability to Congress or the American people. For 15 years, we've lived under the shadow of Dodd-Frank. This law didn't just reshape banking, it rewrote the rules for our capital markets. It handed the SEC sweeping new powers that have led to regulatory overreach, costly disclosure mandates, and mission creep into areas like corporate governance and executive compensation, areas historically governed by state law and protected by the business judgment rule.
For 15 years, these policies have burdened the U.S. public companies while giving foreign competitors a leg up. Even worse, foreign private issuers were exempted from many of the most burdensome Dodd-Frank disclosure requirements. We all know that healthy competition and innovation drive economic growth, creating more opportunities and better financial services for all Americans. Instead of burdening institutions with excessive red tape, we should be empowering them to serve families, small businesses, and local communities. That includes small and mid-sized companies trying to raise capital or grow through public market access. Unfortunately, the complexity and cost imposed by Dodd-Frank have helped fuel the long-term decline in U.S. initial public offerings, discouraging companies from going public altogether. As we examine the last 15 years, I hope we can do so with clear eyes. It's also time to take a hard look at the rules that never made sense in the first place. Rules that sit on the shelf and create needless uncertainty for market participants, just waiting for some new, unelected bureaucrat to dust them off and put them to work. That's not how our systems should work. We must work together to craft thoughtful, bipartisan reforms that restore balance, foster growth, and protect consumers. I look forward to a robust and productive discussion today. I'm grateful to our panel for being with us, and I'm hopeful that we can chart a better path forward for all Americans through financial oversight and through reform of Dodd-Frank. I yield back. I now recognize the distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mrs. Waters, for five minutes for an opening statement.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everyone. Before I discuss today's hearing topic, we just got news that inflation has jumped to 2.7% as Trump's tariffs have started to take effect. This is another reason Trump's reckless tariffs and attacks on the Fed's independence are so dangerous and consumers and small businesses will pay the price. It's striking. that with this hearing, we are marking the 15th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act legislation enacted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which unfolded under a Republican's watch with President George W. Bush's administration. And yet, this same week, Republicans in Congress are repeating the same mistakes that triggered the crisis in the first place. It's as if they have learned nothing from the painful lessons of 2008, the wave of foreclosures, the millions of jobs lost, and the devastation of countless families watching their entire life savings vanish in a blink of an eye. Unfortunately, over the past 15 years, Republicans spend more time trying to undo Dodd-Frank than they have spent time trying to protect consumers and investors. They have done more to fight for interests of the same Wall Street CEOs whose reckless actions destabilize our economy than fighting for the Main Street and working class Americans who power our economy. There's no clearer example of this than what we're witnessing just this week. Republicans are pushing two particularly dangerous bills that will unleash frisky, cryptocurrency into our mainstream financial system without proper guardrails to protect hardworking Americans. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is.
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