Congressman Andy Barr Delivers Keynote at Flyover Fintech

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA – Recently, U.S. Congressman Mike Flood invited Congressman Andy Barr to give remarks and to take questions at this year’s Flyover Fintech conference. Congressman Barr highlighted legislative priorities while additionally laying out the Republican case for financial services and innovation.

Video of the address can be found here. News outlets are welcome to use the footage for their reporting purposes. Brief excerpts from the keynote address can be found below.

Barr: [The Constitution says that] all legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States… meaning that no legislative power shall be vested in an executive branch administrative agency. Yet, we have in some cases unconstitutionally delegated away our lawmaking authority way too much to unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch. Think the Securities and Exchange Commission. Think the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB). Think the Vice Chairman of Supervision at the Federal Reserve. So, we need to claw that back.

Barr: We need market structure for digital assets. We need that certainty and stability there… a regulatory framework so that we can be the destination for crypto investment in the United States. We also need a stablecoin regulatory regime.

Barr: Today, the CFPB regulates by threat, by press release. It’s not even by enforcement—they don’t even get to enforcement because they threaten an [Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts or Practices (UDAAP)] violation, and nobody knows what an abusive act or practice is because it’s not defined by law. It’s like that old definition of obscenity, “I’ll know it when I see it.”