It's going to be a busy week here in Washington as the one hundred and eighteenth Congress tries to wrap up its work for the year. That of course, will include finding a way to keep the government open past midnight on Friday, where the deadline is, and we have no deal yet as to how exactly that happens. We know it will be a stopgap measure of some time,
likely going into March. We just don't know how exactly the sausage is going to be made and what compromise the Democrat and Republican leaders in both chambers will reach, But we do know what does need to get done and get a signature from President Biden by that deadline on Friday, so that when we come back in January and the one hundred and nineteenth Congress takes its seats, they can get started on their to do list, and certainly the incoming chairs of the various committees in the
House have to do lists of their own, and one of them is joining us now here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. He was just named the incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, and his Live with Me from Capitol Hill. Congressman French Hill of Arkansas. Congratulations sir, first and foremost for getting the gabble here, and I do want to get into everything you want to accomplish in financial services in the two years ahead. Could we just begin, though, with what exactly is going to happen
this week? Is there's not a lot of time to work with here, and I wonder if the seventy two hour rule to read this stopgap legislation after its released is going to have to be waived.
Well, Kayley, it's always good to be with you. Thanks for having me. Usually we hope to have that bill posted over the weekend, and we didn't see it, so you're right, we may be confronted with a tight time frame in order to review it before we have to vote on it and get the Senate to approve it before Friday.
Well, that certainly is true. And when we talk about it being a deal making here, we understand that the Speaker is looking for economic aid to farmers and might need to offer out something else to Democrats in exchange for that. Are you concerned at all about what additional provisions do Democrats want could work its way into this continuing resolution?
Well? Sure, because the real issue is that the continuing resolution be done at the Fiscal Responsibility Act levels. This is the agreement. I think the Speaker's done an outstanding job negotiating that. But our farm counties in this country are facing a crisis. The last three years have been bad on pricing. There were high supplies and number of commodities this year which depressed price furthers. So they've had high costs from the Ukraine invasion plus now low prices
this year. So it's tough to be refinanced if you've had three bad years of a row. I was an ag lender many many years ago in banking, so I know how tough that is. The Speakers trying to get a deal where we just simply help the farm economy. I don't know why the Democrats are trying to take advantage of farmers who are hurting. This is not like it's a Republican policy, It's an American policy and try to help these farmers get through a tough period.
Well, I'm glad you raised your background is once being a lender and community banker, sir, as we understand that is one of the reasons why you were able to win the gavel in what was a competitive race for the Chairmanship of Financial Services. So let's get into what you want to accomplish. I'd like to begin with crypto
as this is Bloomberg TV and Radio. We obviously saw, as you shared the Digital Asset Subcommittee, through your committee and the House, the passage of the FIT twenty one Act Crypto Market Structure legislation that divvied up responsibilities between the CFTC and SEC. Are you going to start there and make changes or would you rather start from scratch when it comes to crypto market structure?
Well, first, Dusty Johnson from South Dakota and Gt. Thompson of Pennsylvania, both on the AD Committee, were my partners. They'll be my partners again in this Congress. We don't have a learning curve here. We can take the lessons that we learned in one hundred and eighteenth Congress by producing FIT, which was a bill that got seventy one Democratic votes here in the House, and the work that Jerman McKenny did with the ranking Member Maxine Waters on
a stable coin bill. Both those will be priorities coming into the new Congress. We want to work with the Trump administration and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott and try to get all of us on the same page as to how do we proceed in the one hundred and nineteenth. We've got new interest in the Senate. Bill Haggerty of Tennessee introduced his own bill in and around digital assets just before the election.
Well, so what we consider though the actual market structure questions here? Obviously when FIT twenty one was passed, Gary Gensler was the chair of the secs he is now that will be changing in the new administration. Presumably it will be Paul Atkins, and I wonder if you're more comfortable with the SEC having greater authority over crypto compared to the CFTC under that kind of regime, if it's no longer going to be Gary Gensler at the HELM.
Well, we didn't draft the FIT twenty one legislation because Gary Gensler was the chairman of the SEC. We drafted it because we thought there needed to be clear, transparent, transparent fit for purpose rules of the road for digital asset companies so that tokens that are on a decentralized functioning blockchain are treated differently. They're not treated as securities. And we put that in law and to find exactly
how to do it. And I think that's still important for the SEC under President Trump and Paul Adkins as the chairman elect, because there's some things you can do by exemptive relief at the SEC, but there are other things that you actually need statutory work for. We're prepared to work with the new chairman the new Commission, but permanent changes come from making legal changes, not just doing
exemptive relief at the Commission. So I prefer a legislative solution, but I want to work with the chairman and see how we can work together well.
And I do wonder about the working It's not just other chairmen in the House and in the Senate, but others in this administration, like say David Sachs, Congressman, what is your relationship like with him or with other agencies that we understand? The White House we'll be giving a voice here in the shaping of crypto policy.
We had a great relationship with the banking regulators, the Treasury, and the White House and the Biden administration on this topic, and I expect this will be even better in the Trump administration. The National Economic Council with Kevin Hastrett and Treasury Secretary Designate miscent the banking supervisors that President Trump will appoint, all of us will work together along with the SEC Chairman on crafting the best policy for digital assets.
We want America to have a growth policy and a fairness and a transparent policy on how to have a digital asset economy here in America that produces growth. We want to add employees here. We don't want this business driven offshore as we witness during the Gensler and Biden Harris regime.
Well, we know the President elect has talked about making the US the bitcoin capital of the world. He's also floated this notion, Sir, of a bitcoin reserve. Do you have any concerns with an establishment of that?
Well, actually, I think Senator Loomis floated the idea of the reserve, and President Trump heard about it when he was at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville during July. This is something that has to be looked at carefully if that has benefits to the US Treasury and to the US balance sheet, and I'm sure Congress and members on both sides of the capital will do that.
As we get into other banking matters as well, would you support a move to abolish the FDIC and to fold its duties into the Treasury Department.
I think you've got to look at whatever proposals that the incoming administration has as part of a matrix, like what is the big picture objective here? Most people in Congress want outstanding, coordinated, harmonized supervision of our financial institutions that encourage new banks, encourage growth, encourage of fair minded rules and capital standards. And they don't want to create a situation where our community banks are going out of
business because they can't comply with all the rules. And we want tailoring, that is, we want smaller banks with simpler balance sheets and simpler strategies to be treated differently than a big, large, complex company like City Bank or JP Morgan Chase. But we're willing to listen to what proposals that the administration has on supervisory changes.
So that's not a no that you wouldn't necessarily be opposed from the start on abolishing the FDIC or shifting the way in which that insurance mechanism actually happens in the US.
Well, I don't personally, I've never seen anybody submit an idea like that. I've read about it in the news, but I think deposit insurance is an important feature. We want to make sure it's run right. The FDIC has a poor leadership right now, but it's been an institution that's carried out its mission in a very tailored way. And I would just argue that we have, mostly in the Biden Harris regime, a personnel problem, not a structural problem.
But the supervisory process in our country between state and federal supervisors has gotten convoluted. It's gotten in conflict with each other, it's not harmonized, it's not coordinated, and so there are a lot of improvements that need to be made in my view and bank supervision. So again I'm open minded about how those could be made. But just taking one out of context and saying that you should do away with the FDIC, I don't think so particularly the right way to go about it.
Well, if it is to stick around, what do you see whoever Trump taps to lead the FDIC and the OCC for that matter, as their chief priority, what would you hoe hope that they deal with first?
Well, first tailoring, following the law, making sure that their light touch regulation where it's deserved, and heavy complex tux regulation where it's merited because of the nature of the business. Further, I think they have to understand that fintech is here, and AI is here, and they need to deal with that reality and make sure that all banks of all sizes and broker dealers of all sizes are treated in
the right way according with their business plan. But de banking businesses because they're involved in the fintech or the crypto business is not a good approach, and that's what we've seen in the Biden Harris administration, and in my view that's a key point to get changed as we change administrations. We do not want customers debanked because they're in a legal business, and we don't want to see banks and thrifts or credit unions or broker dealers treated inappropriately by the supervisors.
Well, certainly we've seen a number of pursuits during this administration in regard to banking, including of course the initial proposal of the BOSL three un gained by the FEDS Vice Chair of Supervision Michael Barr, that obviously is now
being changed. It's unclear what form it's ultimately going to take, sir, and I do wonder how you at the Financial Services Committee are hoping to shape ultimately that endgame and what's going to happen to capital requirements, assuming Michael Barr is still going to be the guy in this role.
Well, look, the Board of Governors is responsible for obviously that decision, and I don't believe that the Board of Governors is supportive of Basil three end game as proposed. I think President Trump should withdraw that rule and repropose whatever the right more balanced approach is. It'd got thousands of comments, they were all negative, and I don't believe that the Biden Harris' effort to just simply tweak the proposal and re release it is the way to go.
I think it should be withdrawn and then be reconsidered by the Trump administration.
As we consider other Biden era banking policies. Would you support a congressional review through the Congressional Review Act of any of them?
Well, we have. We've done that for the Small Business Data Reporting, which is Section ten seventy one, that was a CFPB proposal. We've done that for the current the Corporate Transparency Act, which I still hope gets put in the cr this week to delay that. This is this beneficial ownership reporting for thirty two million American small businesses that I believe is the wrong approach and handled in
an incorrect way. So I hope that we can use We've used the CRA for that, and we want to try to delay the implementation of that for a year since to give us an opportunity to reconsider. We'll use the Congressional Review Act. We'll use our Article one power on funding through looking at activities in the Financial Services Committee that are not currently authorized, and so we're going to use all the oversight authorities that we have at house financial Services to roll back what we believe to
be an inappropriate level of regulation proposed by Biden. Harris.
I'd like to ask you, as well a Congressman, about something we're hearing a lot about in Washington these days as we get ready for the second administration and for the doge to make their recommendations. It's this idea of remote work, or perhaps a return to working in the office instead of working remotely for those who work in
Washington through federal agencies. Is there anything Congress can do to help the administration this incoming administration see through that goal of having people return to the office, even if there's existing union contracts that allow them to work from home.
And this is the advantage of the DOGE process with Vivek and Elon. I think it's good to have for profit business executives look at the sedimentary regulatory burden that's been built up over years, and also the HR and work practices in the bureaucracy and try to find ways to do things in a more effective way efficient way, and we're possible to get out of certain businesses that
are not necessary. We have a real issue here in Washington, d C. I think the last number I saw Kayley was only about forty percent of the federal workforce, and the District Columbia is in the office, and so the question is is that appropriate or inappropriate based on the
kind of work that they're doing. We've seen since the pandemic the whole economy shift workflows, and so from a federal government point of view, maybe they don't need to do that in some areas, like if you're working in an auditing capacity, you're on the road a lot or working from a computer, and you want to do that
from home. But that's the kind of good, straightforward look I think we'll get from DOJE in Vavek and Elon as they work with these Cabinet secretaries to assess workloads, management techniques, the use of technology, and the use of where people should be during the workday.
All right, Congressman, thank you so much for being generous with your time on Bloomberg TV and radio today. That's Republican Congressman French Hill of Arkansas, the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Happy holidays to you, sir, and will see you in one hundred and nineteenth when he, of course, will be taking that gavel