Senate reg relief vote could come next week: Banking Committee chair

WASHINGTON — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said Tuesday that he is hopeful that a bipartisan deal to roll back Dodd-Frank Act regulations will be able to get a floor vote as soon as next week.

“I am encouraged by the support that I tend to see developing on both sides,” Crapo said. “My hope is that we will see it come forward next week.”

While the deal was delicately negotiated by Crapo and moderate Democrats on the banking panel, there appears to be bipartisan support for supplementing the bill with other legislative proposals that the House has put forward.

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho
Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, speaks during a Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, chairman of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) nominee for President Donald Trump, not pictured, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, March 23, 2017. Trump tapped Clayton to lead the SEC in January, saying the Sullivan & Cromwell partner would ensure that financial companies thrive and create jobs, while still playing by the rules. Photographer: Zach Gibson/Bloomberg

However, it is unclear if any of those provisions will be able to be attached to the Senate bill without losing Democrat co-sponsors.

“I think it will be an open process,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., a member of the banking panel who co-sponsored the bill.

“There will be lots of opportunities for amendments, but I think at the end of the day … when you put together a deal like this, is that these amendments have to be agreed upon by the sponsors or they are not going to get the right votes,” she said in an interview.

The bill currently has support from 12 Senate Democrats and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats. The Republican caucus would presumably be in full support of the bill.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said in an interview that it “would be nice” to expand the bill, but “I think it could be tough to get 60 votes” for measures that would amend the deal agreed to by the Senate co-sponsors.

The House passed a much further-reaching bill — the Financial Choice Act — to overhaul Dodd-Frank last summer, but that piece of legislation did not have enough support in the Senate to become law. Instead, Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, has broken up the package and moved pieces of it individually.

“We have 35 provisions that we had in the Choice Act that have wide bipartisan support,” Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., told credit union executives on Tuesday at the Credit Union National Association government affairs conference. “We are hoping some of those bipartisan provisions can come up on the Senate floor as amendments and actually add a little more meat on the bones of that Senate bill.”

Duffy is chairman of the subcommittee on housing and insurance.

House Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said on Monday that he thought the Senate could pass its bill by March or April and then the House could pass a companion bill before the midterm elections.

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Regulatory relief Regulatory reform Dodd-Frank Mike Crapo Jeb Hensarling
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