Getting Rid of Wall Street Accountability, Pt. 2

H.R. 10 and S. 1117 — The Financial CHOICE Act Moves to the Senate

While we were all watching former FBI Director James Comey testify before the Senate, the House Republicans passed The Financial CHOICE Act. This bill now moves along to the Senate.

What’s in the Bill

• It ends “Too Big to Fail” — eliminating the ability of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to designate firms as systemically important financial institutions, or payment and clearing organizations as systemically important “financial market utilities.”
• Eliminates the enforcement tools used by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to act against unlawful practices in consumer markets, such as supervising and bringing enforcement actions against big bans, and enforcing lawbreaking by payday and car title lenders that charge sky-high interest rates.
• Prohibits the publishing consumer complaints on financial services that the government collects.

Although there are other provisions in the bill, the long and short of it is that it rolls back regulation passed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown to prevent such a crash from happening again and removes the consumer protections that were also introduced at that time. Here’s the full text from Govtrack:

Text of S. 1117: Consumer Financial Choice and Capital Markets Protection Act of 2017 (Introduced version) - GovTrack.us

The For and Against

The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, the Credit Union National Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable are all in favor of the bill. The Center for Responsible Lending and the National Consumer Law Center are against. Democrats in the House are also strongly opposed. In the Senate, the bill is sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). The bill has three Senate co-sponsors:

• Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
• Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD)
• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Read more arguments from Business Insider:

Here's a breakdown of the Republican plan to tear up Wall Street regulations

And an opposing take from Indivisible:

Oppose the Wall Street-Deregulating Financial CHOICE Act (H.R.10) - Indivisible Guide

Tell Congress what you think about this bill!

Text RESIST to 50409 to sound off on financial deregulation, or see what else is happening this week:

Getting Rid of Wall Street Accountability