Main Street Capital Access Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I want to start by applauding my good friend from Arkansas, Chairman French Hill, for his leadership on this critical legislation. Great job working across the aisle for bipartisan support for this legislation that will help strengthen Main Street America.

The Main Street Capital Access Act is exactly the kind of reform needed to advance this committee's goal of making community banking great again. Over the past 18 months, we have worked hard to develop over two dozen banking reform bills--many of them with strong bipartisan support--and combined them into one multifaceted package designed to strengthen our community financial institutions, not big banks, like the ranking member is referring to, community banks, Main Street banks, midsize banks.

If we want to help hold big banks accountable, then what we need is competition. Competition and choice are good for America, good for consumers, and good for financial stability.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a link to 14 letters of support from the Consumer Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the National Association of Home Builders, and others: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:4c869bbb-74d2-4d1e- befb-1b3aba1a0be3

Community banks and credit unions are the financial backbone of this country. They finance farms, factories, first-time home buyers, and the local entrepreneurs who create jobs in every corner of America. These institutions don't just serve communities. They are part of the community.

Here is the hard truth: Community banks have suffered under a regulatory framework that forgot who the system should serve. For too long, Washington has been writing rules as if every bank and credit union in America is a trillion-dollar global institution. They are not. They are our hometown banks and community financial institutions.

These guardrails that the ranking member talks about rolling back, we are not rolling back guardrails for big, multitrillion-dollar banks. We are talking about small community financial institutions.

The goal is simple: Regulation should follow the risk, not the ZIP Code or the political fashion. A $500 million community bank in rural Kentucky, rural Arkansas, or rural Michigan should not be regulated under the same framework built for a trillion-dollar institution operating around the globe. That means higher costs, fewer loans, more forced consolidation. This hurts everyday Americans by reducing both access to credit and opportunities for small business growth.

The Main Street Capital Access Act is about changing that. It is about rightsizing this regulatory framework to ensure that community lenders get back to what they do best: serving their customers and their communities.

Main Street opens the door for new bank formation, improving transparency in the chartering process, making applications more predictable, and ensuring rural and underserved communities can once again see new institutions formed instead of watching their local banks disappear.

You want to hold big banks accountable? Allow new banks to form.

It also restores proportionality to regulation, updating capital leverage and enhanced prudential standards to actually reflect a bank's risk profile, not just an arbitrary static asset threshold. That means less money spent on regulatory gymnastics and more money available for loans in your communities.

We are also bringing fairness and due process back to the supervision process. Banks and credit unions should not be governed by opaque examiner preferences. They should be governed by clear risk-based and transparent standards that focus on core financial performance rather than foot faults and check-the-box compliance.

Main Street also addresses the structural problems that are driving consolidation. This legislation requires regulators to ensure clarity and predictability in the merger process so that healthy banks can grow and troubled banks can find partners before they fail. It ensures that when banks do fail, like Silicon Valley Bank, community banks aren't shut out of the resolution process by design.

Finally, this legislation recognizes reality: Innovation is happening. The question is whether it happens inside the banking system, where it is supervised and safe, or outside, where it isn't. This bill lets banks partner, modernize, and compete.

Community banks, Mr. Speaker, are the financial infrastructure of America--rural America, suburban America, urban America. When they thrive, small towns thrive. When they are regulated out of existence, capital dries up and opportunity for local ownership disappears.

The Main Street Capital Access Act is a critical step toward restoring the financial backbone of this country.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation.

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