May 16, 2017

Brown Statement on GOP Leader McConnell's Call to Gut Wall Street Reform

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) – ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee – today issued the following statement regarding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) comments that Democrats are blocking efforts to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

"The Senate Republican leader seems to have forgotten the harm Wall Street’s greed and reckless behavior caused to millions of working families and taxpayers who were forced to clean up the mess. Democrats will do everything in our power to block efforts aimed at leaving Americans at the mercy of predatory lenders and on the hook for another megabank bailout. If this were really about community banks, we might have come to an agreement years ago, but Republicans are once again using them as leverage to help a rogue’s gallery of special interests."

Brown and the Banking Committee’s Democrats have supported a host of changes to the Wall Street reform law to help community banks and credit unions. The bipartisan, five-year transportation bill that President Obama signed into law in 2015 included several provisions that Brown and Banking Committee Democrats proposed earlier that year to streamline rules for the nation’s smallest financial institutions, without gutting Wall Street reform. These provisions:

  • Boost the number of small banks that could be eligible for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation examinations on an 18-month cycle, instead of an annual cycle.
  • Eliminate the requirement that financial institutions send annual privacy notices to their customers, if their privacy policy hasn't changed.
  • Allow privately insured credit unions to be eligible for membership in the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system and receive FHLB funding.

In March, Brown and Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) put out a joint statement asking the public for legislative proposals to boost U.S. economic growth. The Banking Committee is currently reviewing the proposals that it received.

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