Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, is calling for more changes to banking rules than are currently included the Senate’s bipartisan banking regulatory relief bill, raising the prospects that the legislative package could run into difficulty if further negotiations aren’t handled with finesse.
The House Financial Services chairman “remains committed to ensuring that the House’s voice is heard” on the bill currently headed toward a final vote in the upper chamber, a spokesman said.
The regulatory relief bill, S. 2155, was carefully negotiated by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, with a dozen Democratic co-sponsors. It contains several measures meant to ease the burden of regulations on small banks and larger regional banks.
Liberal Democrats, though, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have attacked the bill as a giveaway to Wall Street megabanks, making the vote a difficult one for Democrats.
Going to conference with the House or accepting changes made by the more conservative House Republicans could put those more centrist Democrats in a tough position.
Crapo released a substitute amendment for the bill Wednesday night apparently meant to address some of the criticisms. For instance, it includes language more specifically geared at ruling out regulatory relief for large foreign banks operating in the U.S.
But Hensarling wants more provisions that have passed the House on a bipartisan basis included, per his spokeswoman, Sarah Flaim.
Flaim sent along a list of more than two dozen House-passed bipartisan bills.
“The Senate has put forth their bill,” she commented. “The House has its bills. It is our expectation that those bills be reconciled through conference — be it formal or informal.”
Some of the bills that Hensarling has shepherded through the lower chamber are more technical measures that wouldn’t endanger the bill’s viability in the Senate.
Yet the House has passed some bipartisan bills that would create a headache for Senate Democrats, such as one that would ensure that nonbanks are allowed to charge very high, payday loan-style interest rates on loans.
