While all eyes in Washington are glued on the Senate Intelligence Committee's hearing with former FBI Director James Comey, the House is going to be busy voting to allow Wall Street the ability to wreck the entire economy again. Yep, they're repealing Dodd-Frank today.
The bill coming up for a vote, the Financial Choice Act, has maintained a low profile compared with Republican plans on health care and taxes, but it represents a major part of an agenda the Republicans say will unshackle the economy and accelerate economic growth.
“This legislation comes to the rescue of Main Street America,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday. “The Dodd-Frank Act has had a lot of bad consequences for our economy, but most of all in the small communities across our country.” […]
The Choice Act would exempt some financial institutions that meet capital and liquidity requirements from many of Dodd-Frank’s restrictions that limit risk taking. It would also replace Dodd-Frank’s method of dealing with large and failing financial institutions, known as the orderly liquidation authority — which critics say reinforces the idea that some banks are too big to fail — with a new bankruptcy code provision.
In addition, the legislation would weaken the powers of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Under the proposed law, the president could fire the agency’s director at will.
This time, Ryan is having the vote with a Congressional Budget Office score in hand. The CBO says the bill would reduce federal deficits by $24.1 billion over the next 10 years, but said that it is a very uncertain estimate because it was "difficult to predict when a 'systemically important' financial firm might fail." That's comforting, huh?
The bill will pass, probably with just Republican votes. Because the Senate is limited in the number of things it can pass under the budget reconciliation procedure, this one won't get through the Senate unless Mitch McConnell decides to nuke the filibuster for legislation. Which is always a possibility, because McConnell seems willing to do just about anything to enact the Republican agenda, never mind the corrupt, potentially treasonous president he's doing it for.