Rep. Williams to Fed Chair Yellen: “Disproportionate” regulations hurting Main Street banks

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Roger Williams (R – Austin), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, last week questioned Janet Yellen, the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, about the negative impact of federal regulations on community financial institutions.

Williams asked, “When I go back home, what should I tell the community banks and credit unions who feel like they are being penalized, even targeted, for the financial collapse of our economy”? “I personally have heard from banks in my district about the disproportionate impact of the ever mounting regulatory burden.”

Yellen responded that “community banks are very important in supplying kinds of services to their communities that may not be readily available from larger institutions.”

Williams, who has more than 40 years’ experience in small business, wrote in a recent op-ed, “The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act… has proven to be an expensive blanket of one-size fits all rules on the private sector written by Washington bureaucrats, some of whom have never spent one day of their adult life outside of government.”

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