The Senate will vote next week on a bipartisan bank regulatory relief legislative package that would be the biggest change to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law since it was signed.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture on the bill Thursday afternoon, meaning that the Senate will vote next week to cut off debate on the measure and then pass it.
The bill contains a grab bag of measures meant to lessen regulatory burdens on banks, particularly on smaller banks.
It also would ease the rules that apply to some regional banks that are neither community banks nor Wall Street megabanks, such as Atlanta-based SunTrust and Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank. That goal would be accomplished by raising the threshold that Dodd-Frank set for the strictest oversight from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion in assets.
The legislative package, authored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, has the support of a dozen Democrats, including several who face tough re-elections in states won by President Trump.
Liberal Democrats have charged that the bill would increase the risk of a financial crisis, both by lessening oversight of regional banks and through other provisions that could affect bigger banks.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and others on the left end of the Democratic Party have resisted significant changes to Dodd-Frank for years, including under former President Barack Obama.
The Crapo bill could be altered before passage to include more provisions favored by House Republicans, who want more comprehensive changes to Dodd-Frank. Last year, House Republicans passed a bill that would largely replace Dodd-Frank, but that measure could not get support in the Senate.
