House Republicans won’t be winning over any Democrats with the changes to their bill to replace Dodd-Frank, if Rep. Maxine Waters’ reaction to the updated legislation is any example.
Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said the changes circulated among Republicans Tuesday night made the bill “even worse” than the version the committee advanced last year.
The Republican bill, Waters said Wednesday, “bows down shamefully to Wall Street’s worst impulses and would lead us back down the road to economic catastrophe.”
At the top of the list of Waters’ complaints: The new version of the bill would dramatically curtail the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability to set rules for financial institutions, restricting its role to enforcement of consumer laws only, and making its director serve at the will of the president.
Republicans say they’re confident they can pass a partisan financial regulatory overhaul in the House. But the prospects for altering the 2010 Dodd-Frank law get trickier from there.
To pass a big package of changes in the Senate, Republicans would need the help of eight Democrats. Lawmakers such as Waters, who has tacked to the populist left on banking issues in recent years, were never likely to go along with the kind of regulatory relief measures the GOP wants, and persuading even centrist Democrats would be a challenge.
The other option would be for Republicans to try to pass legislation on a partisan basis, using the budget reconciliation process that allows bills to clear the Senate with only 51 votes but restricts which provisions can be included.
