Major regulatory relief provisions sought by the financial industry were not included in the omnibus spending bill introduced in the late hours Tuesday night.
Liberal Democrats had rallied for months to stop such riders, which banks and other financial businesses wanted to pass over their objections by tying them with must-pass spending legislation.
“We’re profoundly disappointed that lawmakers were unable to enact common-sense reforms in this session of Congress that would help America’s hometown banks better serve their clients, customers and communities and make the loans that drive our economy forward,” incoming American Bankers Association president Rob Nichols said in a statement Wednesday morning.
Banks had been seeking a number of changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law in the bill. They had also just recently been handed a loss in a highway funding bill that raised money for roads and bridges by cutting the dividend paid by the Federal Reserve to its members banks.
Also left out of the bill was legislation to delay or stop the Labor Department’s planned crackdown on conflicts of interest in retirement planning. That rule, called the fiduciary rule, was a top target of the industry and Republicans.
None of the major measures in the financial overhaul bill backed by Senate Banking Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., found their way into the end-of-year spending legislation. Those provisions included changing the way regulators identify and regulate financial firms that could pose a threat to the financial system if they failed, along with other far-reaching changes. Nor will the legislation change the operations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new agency that the industry and Republicans have criticized as unaccountable.
The lack of such provisions means that this year will not be a replay of last year, when liberal Democrats in the House and Senate rallied against a government funding bill backed by the Obama White House and then-Democratic Majority Leader Harry Leader because it included a roll-back of a Dodd-Frank rule on certain derivatives.
