Hoyer Remarks at Press Conference with House Democrats Opposing the Wrong Choice Act

WASHINGTON, DC - House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD) joined Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi; Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters; Rep. David Cicilline, co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee; and Financial Services Committee Vice Ranking Member Dan Kildee at a press conference this afternoon to voice opposition to the "Wrong Choice" Act. This bill, being considered by the House today, removes consumer protections put in place after the financial crisis. Below is a transcript of his remarks: 

“Thank you very much Ranking Member Waters, who has done such a great job at protecting our consumers and our financial stability. Thank you Leader Pelosi.

“This is the wrong choice, but it is the usual choice that we see our Republican friends making. This has been five months of reducing protections. Reducing protections for our consumers, reducing protections for our environment, reducing protections for the health care of our people.

“A string of bills that have been passed, this being just the most immediate one, which reduces protecting Americans from those who would prey on them, which would undermine their fiscal security, their family security, their health security.

“Like the Affordable Care Act, most of the people opposing this legislation opposed Dodd-Frank, perhaps all. They opposed protecting the people from financial institutions that would prey on them and put them at risk. So now they come with this Trojan horse, if you will. Pretending that somehow it will make protections better when in fact, as the Ranking Member has pointed out, and the Leader has pointed out, it will undermine and eliminate the protections that the American people must have and frankly that our financial institutions must have so they can remain stable and serving the American people. I am pleased to join in opposing this wrong choice for the American people.

“We’re going to vote on this pretty soon, we’re going to vote overwhelmingly against it. It may or may not pass, but I am sure that it will not pass the United States Senate because it is the wrong choice.”