While the bill keeps many elements of the Dodd-Frank Act in place, it would represent the biggest rollback of regulation since the financial crisis
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The Senate has passed a rollback of Dodd-Frank regulations, the largest relaxing of financial rules since the global economic meltdown a decade ago.
The bill, called the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, passed 67-31, according to a Washington Post report. It will now go to the House for consideration.
If it becomes law, the bill will free more than two dozen banks from the most stringent regulatory oversight required by Dodd-Frank, the Post reported. While the new legislation does leave key provisions of Dodd-Frank in place, it’s still a significant reduction of banking rules.
The bill garnered significant bipartisan support, but fractured the Senate Democratic Caucus. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) were adamantly against the bill, while other Democrats were vocal supporters.
Warren and Brown argued that the bill was a gift to Wall Street at the expense of taxpayer security, and that it would make a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis likelier. Democratic senators like Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), meanwhile, said that the bill would loosen draconian regulations on local banks, allowing them to focus more on community lending, the Post reported.
“It’s a bill that I am incredibly proud of,” Heitkamp said during 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.”
