Standoff imperils effort to roll back banking rules
Current version of bill take-it-or-leave-it for Senate Dems.
Congress appeared on the cusp of rolling back post-financial crisis banking rules last month after Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats passed a bill through the Senate despite opposition from high-profile progressives. But now a stubborn standoff between a powerful House Republican, Senate Democrats and the White House threatens to derail the effort entirely.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Service Committee, wants to change the Senate bill to bring it closer to a more expansive version of the rollback the House passed last year. For Hensarling, it’s a last chance before retirement to take aim at the banking rules he has struggled against for years, only to see his previous efforts stall in the Senate.
The Democ r ats who backed the Senate bill are telling Hensarling their version is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, saying changes would imperil their coalition. The Democrats already bucked party leadership — and drew criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and others — for supporting the measure the first time, and they’re uninterested in reopening the messy intra- party dispute.
White House officials are making clear they want to see legislation finalized sooner rather than later. President Trump said during a tax event in West Virginia last week the banking bill “should be done fairly quickly.”
The struggle pits GOP pragmatists looking for a win against Hensarling’s broader ambitions. Democrats who backed the measure billed it as a way to improve the rules put in place after the financial crisis. But for Hensarling, the measure marks a last chance to cut into a bill he has spent the second half of his 16-year congressional career fighting — and he has so far been unwilling to sign off on the Senate bill unless it includes a list of around 30 bipartisan House bills he wants to add. Hensarling’s close ally House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) shares the chairman’s conservative economic ideology and has thus far deferred to him, hoping he can find a deal.
But Ryan could ultimately hold a vote on the Senate measure without Hensarling’s sign-off, and there are growing signs the White House may lose patience waiting for the House to move forward, especially given how difficult it would be for the Senate to pass another version of the bill.
“You won’t believe this - we’re actually getting bipar- tisan support . ... ” Trump said in West Virginia.
“Maybe Joe won’t, but most people will,” Trump went on in a jab at Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is up for reelection in November, even though Manchin was one of the 17 members of the Senate Democratic caucus who voted for the bill.
Trump’s comment, however erroneous, provided a window into the tricky politics for Senate Democrats around the legislation. The first vote laid bare divisions between liberals such as Warren and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and moderates such as Manchin and Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Jon Tester of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, all of whom will face voters in Trump states in November and supported the banking bill.
Along w ith Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., one of the lead authors of the 2010 law known as the Dodd-Frank Act, the Democrats are insisting the House should just pass the version of the bill that cleared the Senate and send it to Trump for his signature. If the House sends a version back with Hensarling’s changes, Warner has said he’ll encourage all 17 Senate Democrats who voted for the bill to pull their support.