Friday, October 25, 2024

Senate passes rollback of banking rules enacted after financial crisis

March 15, 2018 by  
Filed under Lingerie Events

Comments Off

The Senate on Wednesday passed the biggest loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis a decade ago, delivering wide bipartisan support for weakening banking rules despite bitter divisions among Democrats.

The bill, which passed 67 votes to 31, would free more than two dozen banks from the toughest regulatory scrutiny put in place after the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite President Trump’s promise to do a “big number” on the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the new measure leaves key aspects of the earlier law in place. Nonetheless, it amounts to a significant rollback of banking rules aimed at protecting taxpayers from another financial crisis and future bailouts.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders praised the legislation’s passage. “The bill provides much-needed relief from the Dodd-Frank Act for thousands of community banks and credit unions and will spur lending and economic growth without creating risks to the financial system,” she said.

Given the bipartisan support for the bill, Wednesday’s passage was expected. But for the first time since Trump became president, the divisions lurking within the Senate Democratic Caucus burst into full view, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) leading vehement opposition to the bill, even as supporters — including Democrats up for reelection in states Trump won — supported it with equal vigor.

Warren and Brown argued the bill amounts to a gift to Wall Street that increases taxpayer risk while boosting the chances of another financial crisis. Supporters of the legislation — including endangered Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) — disputed that characterization, contending that the bill’s aim is to loosen onerous regulations on local banks and credit unions, freeing them to focus more on community lending, particularly in rural states.

“It is a bill that I am in­cred­ibly proud of,” Heitkamp said in a Senate floor debate this week. “Dodd-Frank was supposed to have stopped too big to fail, but the net result has been too small to succeed. The big banks have gotten bigger since the passage of Dodd-Frank, and the small banks have disappeared.”

Following Heitkamp on the floor, Warren condemned the legislation as “the bank lobbyist act” and said it “puts American families in danger of getting punched in the gut.”

“Washington is poised to make the same mistake it has made many times before, deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising, only to set the stage for another financial crisis,” Warren said.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposed the legislation but has played little role in a debate that has allowed liberals and moderates in his caucus to stake out positions tailored to their own political needs. But after Warren called out red-state Democrats and other supporters of the bill by name in a fundraising appeal, Schumer encouraged her to stay focused on the substance in the debate, according to a person familiar with the exchange who requested anonymity to discuss it.

Few of the Democrats named by Warren wanted to comment publicly on dissension within the caucus. Heitkamp downplayed their disagreements, saying of Warren in an interview, “She feels very, very strongly about this. I think it’s a difference between where we’ve always been on these banking issues. And you know obviously as you’re moving the bill forward, these differences were going to come to a head, and we were going to see a conflict because I just don’t see the bill the way she does.”

It’s not clear whether the Democratic divisions laid bare by the banking bill will resurface anytime soon, given the light legislative schedule expected in the Senate for the remainder of this midterm election year. But the debate highlighted how the political imperatives for red-state Democrats can collide with those of liberals such as Warren, who’s seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, creating the potential for conflict that could flare anew in future.

Banks with more than $50 billion in assets are now considered “too big to fail” and are subject to the toughest regulations, including a yearly stress test to prove they could survive another period of economic turmoil. The Senate legislation, shepherded by Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would raise that threshold to $250 billion in assets, potentially allowing several high-profile financial institutions, including American Express, Ally Financial and Barclays, to escape the extra regulatory scrutiny.

The bill’s supporters say these banks have been unfairly saddled with regulations originally intended for global behemoth banks such as JPMorgan Chase, not regional or midsized firms. Lifting the restrictions would save the industry billions a year in compliance costs, industry analysts say. It would also make it easier for them to reward shareholders with dividends and stock buybacks, they say.

Democrats and advocacy groups warn that the push to loosen the regulations fails to recognize that many of the midsized institutions that would be helped by the Senate legislation fell into dire financial straits less than a decade ago and needed more than $40 billion in taxpayer bailouts. During a financial crisis, they say, banks tend to fail in tandem, suffering from similar ailments. And the failure of several in a short time period could strain the U.S. economy.

The bill has largely been marketed as long-overdue help for small community banks and credit unions. The legislation, for example, would exempt banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the “Volcker rule,” which bars banks from making risky wagers with their own money. The bill would also exempt many small banks from a Dodd-Frank requirement that financial institutions report more detailed data on whom they lend to. The industry has complained that both measures are too cumbersome and time-consuming.

Exempting small banks from the mortgage data requirement would weaken the government’s ability to enforce fair-lending requirements, making it easier for community banks to hide discrimination against minority mortgage applicants and harder for regulators to root out predatory lenders, consumer advocates say.

The bill still needs to be approved in the House, where Republicans have been pushing a more aggressive rollback of financial regulations. That chamber passed a bill last year that stripped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created under Dodd-Frank, of much of its power, for example. But the future of the CFPB is not addressed in the Senate bill.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has said that House Republicans will want to alter the Senate bill to reflect their priorities. But that could drive away the Senate Democrats needed to pass the legislation, and so the House will face significant pressure to accept the Senate legislation with few, if any, changes.

Although the banking bill marked the first bipartisan legislation of the Trump era aside from must-pass spending deals, it was far from a freewheeling debate on the floor. Because of disagreement between the parties that has become routine, no amendment votes were permitted, frustrating senators in both parties who hoped to advance favored policies.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Banking Committee, had been pushing an amendment to strike a section of the bill that could reduce the capital cushions of five of America’s biggest banks. Though supported by liberal Senate Democrats, it never came up for a vote amid the wrangling over the amendment process.

Jeffrey Stein contributed to this report.

Share and Enjoy

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Delicious
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Add to favorites
  • Email
  • RSS

Conor Lamb Wins Pennsylvania House Seat, Giving Democrats a Map for Trump Country

March 15, 2018 by  
Filed under Lingerie Events

Comments Off

Just as vividly, the race showed that only one party — the Democrats — appears willing to grapple with the implications of campaigning under its unpopular figurehead.

In Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb, a 33-year-old former prosecutor from a local Democratic dynasty, presented himself as independent-minded and neighborly, vowing early that he would not support Ms. Pelosi to lead House Democrats and playing down his connections to his national party. He echoed traditional Democratic themes about union rights and economic fairness, but took a more conservative position on the hot-button issue of guns.

Photo

Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate, campaigned chiefly as a stand-in for President Trump, endorsing the president’s agenda from top to bottom.

Credit
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Throughout the race, Mr. Lamb said he welcomed support from people who voted for Mr. Trump, and he saved his most blunt criticism for Mr. Ryan, highlighting the speaker’s ambitions to overhaul Social Security and Medicare.

Mr. Lamb’s approach could become a template for a cluster of more moderate Democrats contesting conservative-leaning seats, in states like Arkansas, Kansas and Utah. Democrats in Washington have focused chiefly on Republican-held seats in the upscale suburbs where Mr. Trump is most intensely disliked.

But they are hungry for gains across the political map, and in red areas they have encouraged candidates to put local imperatives above fealty to the national party, even tolerating outright disavowals of Ms. Pelosi.

Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, a Democrat who represents a farm and manufacturing district Mr. Trump narrowly carried, said the party’s recruits should feel free to oppose Ms. Pelosi if they choose. She noted that she was helping one such anti-Pelosi candidate, Paul Davis of Kansas, who was in Washington this week raising money.

“If they want somebody else to be a leader, then they ought to express that,” Ms. Bustos said. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Representative Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, a veteran Democrat from a neighboring district, said Mr. Lamb had benefited from “buyer’s remorse” among Trump supporters and had wisely tailored his message to the conservative-leaning area.

“This guy has made a lot of promises that aren’t being kept,” Mr. Doyle said of the president.

On the Republican side, Mr. Saccone, 60, campaigned chiefly as a stand-in for Mr. Trump, endorsing the president’s agenda from top to bottom. He campaigned extensively with Mr. Trump and members of his administration and relied heavily on campaign spending from outside Republican groups that attempted to make Ms. Pelosi a central voting issue. Conservative outside groups also sought to promote the tax cuts recently enacted by the party, but found that message had little effect.

Yet the Republicans’ all-hands rescue mission was not enough to salvage Mr. Saccone’s candidacy. Mr. Saccone has not conceded and Republicans have indicated they may challenge the results through litigation, a long-shot strategy.

Pennsylvania Special Election Results: Lamb Wins 18th Congressional District

See full results and maps of the Pennsylvania special election.


In a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday morning, Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, who leads the party’s campaign committee, described the race as “too close to call,” according to a person who heard his presentation.

But Mr. Ryan and Mr. Stivers also called the election a “wake-up call” for Republican lawmakers, telling them that they could not afford to fall behind on fund-raising, as Mr. Saccone did.

Mr. Lamb raised $3.9 million and spent $3 million, compared with Mr. Saccone’s $900,000 raised and $600,000 spent as of Feb. 21. But Republican outside groups swamped the district. Between conservative “super PACs” and the National Republican Congressional Committee, Mr. Saccone had more than $14 million spent on his behalf.

Mr. Lamb got just over $2 million.

As Republican lawmakers spilled out of their morning conference meeting, few seemed willing to come to grips with how much Mr. Trump is energizing Democrats and turning off independent voters. Some of them even argued that Mr. Saccone had managed to make the race close only thanks to the president’s rally in the district on Saturday.

“The president came in and helped close this race and got it to where it is right now,” said Mr. Ryan.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Others in the conference, however, talked more openly about the political difficulties of breaking with Mr. Trump.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“There is no benefit from running away from the president,” said Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, a member of his party’s leadership, noting that Republican candidates need core conservative voters, a constituency that still backs the president, to show up.

“It doesn’t get them the same thing as Lamb opposing Pelosi,” Mr. McHenry said.

Even Mr. Stivers, who has the task of re-electing a contingent of lawmakers from districts that backed Hillary Clinton, declined to say Republicans should feel free to break from Mr. Trump.

The New Pennsylvania Congressional Map, District by District

Democrats couldn’t have asked for much more from the new map.


“I am not going to tell anybody to be against the president,” he said.

But turnout levels in the district’s suburban precincts proved crucial for Mr. Lamb, and a handful of Republican House veterans conceded this broader vulnerability.

“We know that’s probably where the president’s appeal is the weakest,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a longtime party strategist, adding: “It’s a pattern we’ve seen throughout.”

But he argued that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity in high-income areas would be less of a drag on incumbents who had their own identity and were steeled for difficult races.

Yet even as most Republicans pinned the blame on Mr. Saccone’s fund-raising weakness or held up Mr. Lamb’s willingness to oppose Ms. Pelosi, refusing to fault Mr. Trump, one retiring lawmaker was more blunt.

“Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a frequent critic of the president. “I’ve been through wave elections before.”

Democrats were buoyant at Mr. Lamb’s victory, viewing his upset as both a harbinger of a November wave and perhaps a sign that the party had overcome some of the most stinging Republican attack lines of the Obama years. Polling in both parties found Ms. Pelosi widely disliked among voters in the district, but the Republican ads featuring her apparently failed to disqualify Mr. Lamb.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Mayor Bill Peduto of Pittsburgh, a Democrat, said Mr. Lamb’s campaign showed that the Republicans’ anti-Pelosi playbook had limitations. The race, he said, should embolden Democrats to contest difficult districts in the Midwest with an economic message that appeals to elements of Mr. Trump’s base.

“Conor Lamb was talking about redevelopment and economic growth, and the Republicans were talking about Nancy Pelosi,” Mr. Peduto said. “It’s like they couldn’t help themselves.”

Photo

Speaker Paul D. Ryan called the Pennsylvania election a “wake-up call” for Republican lawmakers, telling them that they could not afford to fall behind on fund-raising.

Credit
Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Mr. Peduto urged the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the electioneering vehicle for House Democrats, to expand its target list in the Trump-aligned Midwest.

“Look through the Rust Belt, in areas that used to be blue,” Mr. Peduto said. “If you’re in a congressional district that’s eight, 10 or 12 points carried by Trump, I would hope that the D.C.C.C. is now putting that in the target.”

To the extent that Democrats attempt further incursions into Trump country, it may test their party’s willingness to tolerate Lamb-like deviation on matters like gun control, and perhaps more widespread rejection of Ms. Pelosi.

Democrats in Washington have already faced criticism from liberal activists for intervening in primary elections, in states like Texas and California, to promote candidates that they view as more electable. Putting forward a slate of moderates in Republican areas could prove more controversial than boosting just one in a special election.

Up to this point, however, Democratic leaders and their campaign tacticians have taken a just-win approach, encouraging candidates to attack Mr. Ryan but taking a far more permissive view of party loyalty than their Republican counterparts.

Clarke Tucker, a Democratic state legislator in Arkansas who is challenging Representative French Hill, a Republican, said on Wednesday that he took Mr. Lamb’s victory as a validation of a throw-the-bums-out message he planned to deliver in his own race. Campaigning in a seat that includes Little Rock and its suburbs, Mr. Tucker said he seldom spoke about Mr. Trump and announced up front that he would not back Ms. Pelosi.

Mr. Tucker, who was aggressively recruited by the D.C.C.C., said that he had told Democrats in Washington that he was “very frustrated with the leadership of the House in both parties” and that no one attempted to dissuade him from delivering that message.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“That district is a lot like the one I’m running in,” Mr. Tucker said of Mr. Lamb’s seat. “I think voters are interested in changing the leadership in Washington.”

Continue reading the main story

Share and Enjoy

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Delicious
  • LinkedIn
  • StumbleUpon
  • Add to favorites
  • Email
  • RSS