The House of Representatives on Thursday passed sweeping legislation to strip and replace much of the financial regulations passed under former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaBiden makes supporters nervous; his gaffes could derail him Difference between primaries and caucuses matters in this election Harris apologizes and says she didn't hear questioner call Trump policies 'mentally retarded' MORE after the 2008 financial crisis.

The House passed the Financial Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs (CHOICE) Act, 233-186, along party lines. The bill is not expected to pass the Senate.

Sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the CHOICE Act is the most ambitious Republican effort to roll back the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in 2010. Republicans have long targeted Dodd-Frank, saying it has created a crushing regulatory burden that suffocates small businesses and banks while empowering unaccountable bureaucrats.

“Dodd-Frank represents the greatest imposition on our business enterprises than all Obama-era regulations combined,” Hensarling said Thursday morning in a briefing with reporters. “In many respects, it was not a response to the financial crisis, but a grab bag of leftist ideas that were waiting on the shelf for quite some time.”

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Democrats have fiercely defended Dodd-Frank. They say the bill has held Wall Street accountable for the risky investment practices that caused the crisis and protected Americans from predatory lending and abusive financial firms.

"It's shameful that Republicans have voted to do the bidding of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street and our economy,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “They are setting the stage for Wall Street to run amok and cause another financial crisis. I urge my colleagues in the Senate not to move on this deeply harmful bill."

The CHOICE Act would roll back much of the Dodd-Frank regulations long targeted by Republicans. It would allow banks that reach certain cash thresholds an off-ramp from Dodd-Frank, reduce the frequency of federal stress tests and restrain oversight powers of several federal agencies that the 2010 law expanded.



Hensarling’s bill would also eliminate orderly liquidation authority — the process through which the federal government takes over and dismantles a major bank before it collapses — and place strict limits on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).



The CHOICE Act would turn the CFPB, which Republicans consider abusive and unaccountable, into the Consumer Law Enforcement Agency. It would no longer control its own budget, its director would be appointed by the president, and it would lose its authority to crack down on “unfair, abusive and deceptive practices.”

Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanScott Walker's son considers congressional run Bloomberg revises story on Trump Labor pick who was reinstated Labor reinstates official accused of anti-Semitic posts by Bloomberg story: report MORE (R-Wis.) and GOP leaders touted the bill in the weeks before Thursday’s vote. Ryan, a longtime Hensarling ally who served with him on the House Budget Committee, on Wednesday called the CHOICE Act “the crown jewel” of the GOP deregulation agenda.

“This legislation comes to the rescue of Main Street America,” Ryan said Wednesday. “The Financial CHOICE Act makes it possible for small businesses across this country to stop struggling and to start hiring.”



Democrats have universally opposed the CHOICE Act, claiming it's a boon for Wall Street that puts American consumers at risk. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called it “a dangerous Wall Street-first bill that would drag us back to the days of the Great Recession.”

The CHOICE Act is unlikely to pass the Senate, where the Republican majority is too slim to overcome a Democratic filibuster. Lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee have floated a bipartisan measure to relieve regulations on smaller banks, which has received measured interest from House members.

Trump administration officials have called on the House to pass the CHOICE Act, while urging the Senate to work on changes that could clear the chamber.

Hensarling said he’s also looking to pass some aspects of the bill through budget reconciliation, the budgetary maneuver Democrats used to pass ObamaCare and Republicans are using to repeal it.

While Hensarling said he’s discussed the bill with his Senate counterpart, Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo Michael (Mike) Dean CrapoA US-UK free trade agreement can hold the Kremlin to account Oversight Republicans demand answers on Capital One data breach On The Money: Fed cuts rates for first time since financial crisis | Trump rips Fed after chief casts doubt on future cuts | Stocks slide | Senate kicks budget vote amid scramble for GOP support MORE (R-Idaho), he declined to say what the upper chamber should do.

“I’m certainly not going to advise Chairman Crapo on how to proceed from here,” Hensarling said. “The Senate is a very different animal than the House.”</s>House lawmakers on Thursday advanced the “crown jewel” of the GOP-led regulatory reform effort, effectively gutting the Dodd-Frank financial regulations that were put in place during the Obama administration.

The Republican bill, called the Financial Choice Act, passed the House 233-186 along party lines. The bill seeks to undo significant parts of the 2010 financial reform law.

Crafted by House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, the bill passed despite vehement objections by Democrats to preserve the sweeping law aimed at preventing another financial crisis and protecting American consumers.

“Every promise of Dodd-Frank has been broken,” said Hensarling following his bill’s approval. “We will replace economic stagnation with a growing healthy economy.”

Republicans criticize the Dodd-Frank regulations as the primary driver for anemic economic growth in the U.S. and for enshrining too-big-to-fail, which they say paves the way for future taxpayer bailouts of the country’s biggest banks.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Hensarling’s bill would keep the GOP’s promise to cut onerous financial regulations in order to help create jobs and foster economic growth.

“We see the Financial Choice Act as the crown jewel of this effort,” Ryan said at a press conference. “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.”

Hensarling’s bill would give the president the power to fire the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a consumer watchdog agency created under Dodd-Frank, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at any time for any — or no — reason.

It also gives Congress purview over the CFPB’s budget, meaning lawmakers could defund the agency entirely.

The GOP proposal would also bar the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from overseeing the so-called living will process, which requires banks to write up plans on how they would safely be unwound in the event of a collapse. The FDIC and the Fed are the two regulators responsible for overseeing this requirement under the 2010 law.

Democrats objected to the bill calling it the “Wrong Choice Act.” They say it would return the country to the “regulatory Stone Age” and be a disaster for the U.S. financial system.

“This is a dangerous piece of legislation,” Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip said on the House floor on Thursday. He said the bill would repeat recent history and put Americans at risk of losing millions by taking “referees off the field.”

Minority lawmakers also argue Hensarling’s bill would gut consumer protections and allow banks to make risky investments that required taxpayers to come to the rescue of the nation’s largest financial institutions almost a decade earlier.

“It’s shameful that Republicans have voted to do the bidding of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street and our economy,” said Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House panel.

Now the bill’s destiny will be in the hands of the Senate.

Senate Republicans will likely seek to craft their own companion measure to overhaul the Dodd-Frank regulations.

Led by chairman Mike Crapo, the GOP senators say they want to take a bipartisan approach to creating a regulatory relief bill for Wall Street and community banks. Crapo has been working closely with his counterpart Sherrod Brown, a top Democrat on the panel, to find common ground.

“Democrats have shown we’re willing to work with Republicans to tailor the rules where it makes sense, but not if it means killing the reforms that have made the financial system safer and fairer,” Brown said Wednesday in a statement.

On Thursday, Hensarling said he regularly speaks with Crapo, who he said has “encouraged” him to pass the bill.

“I still think he has high hopes of putting together a companion legislation,” said Hensarling. “What a package would look like I don’t necessarily know,” he said, referring questions to Crapo.

Crapo has vowed to work with all stakeholders, including the Trump White House and regulators, “to strike a balance” in achieving smart regulation that spurs the U.S. economy.

The Idaho senator lauded the bill’s passage as a “positive move away from government micromanagement, and returns to basic principles of safety and soundness and market-driven principles.”

He has set his own target of early 2018 to pass major bank reform legislation.

Unlike the House, Republicans will need to sway at least eight Democrats to pass a regulatory reform bill to cross the 60-vote threshold. GOP senators currently hold 52 seats in the Senate.

Those who closely follow the debate believe there’s no chance Hensarling’s bill would pass the Senate as is. Rather, they expect the upper chamber to advance a separate regulatory relief bill of their own.

“We continue to see no path forward for this legislation in the Senate,” said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen & Co., in a note to clients ahead of the House vote.

Senate Republicans will have two options to advance President Trump’s promise to dismantle the “horrendous” Dodd-Frank law.

They could try to pass a regulatory relief bill through reconciliation, which only requires a 50-vote majority to pass the Senate. That would likely mean a smaller number of limited changes to the Dodd-Frank Act rather than a major single legislative package.

Or they could leave the 2010 regulatory reform law intact and put the onus on regulators, like the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to rewrite some of the rules.

“Much of the language in Dodd-Frank is vague and gives a lot of discretion to regulators on how they write the rules so, over time, I expect the Trump administration will amend some of the Dodd-Frank rules,” said Brian Gardner, a policy analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, in a podcast.

Any changes to the Dodd-Frank regulations, however, require the approval of those in top regulatory posts at three bank regulatory agencies — the Fed, the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency — several of which the president has yet to nominate. Trump has yet to fill three open slots on the Fed board, including a new regulatory czar.

On Monday evening, the president tapped Joseph Otting, a former colleague of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at OneWest to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He will oversee more than 1,000 lenders, including big Wall Street banks. His position still requires Senate approval.

The spotlight on the financial reform this week could “convince the White House that it’s time to act on these key nominations,” said Seiberg.</s>House Republicans voted Thursday to deliver on their promise to repeal Dodd-Frank — the massive set of Wall Street regulations President Barack Obama signed into law after the 2008 financial crisis.

In a near party-line vote, the House approved a bill, dubbed the Financial Choice Act, , which scales back or eliminates many of the post-crisis banking rules.

The legislation is the brainchild of House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

"Dodd-Frank represents the greatest regulatory burden on our economy, more so than all the other Obama-era regulations combined," Hensarling told reporters Wednesday. "There is a better way: economic growth for all; bank bailouts for none."

Hensarling's nearly 600-page bill would defang Dodd-Frank by repealing the so-called Volcker Rule, which prevents government-insured banks from making risky bets with investments. It would also scrap a requirement, which goes into effect Friday, that retirement advisers put their clients' interests ahead of their own.

In perhaps the biggest partisan flashpoint, the bill aims to scale back the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate large banks and payday lenders.

The CFPB was created under Dodd-Frank and is designed to operate as an independent watchdog with a single director. Hensarling considers its structure to be undemocratic.

"To think in a democracy that one un-elected individual can functionally decide what credit cards go in our wallets, what mortgages we can have on our home, whether or not we even have a checking account. I mean, that's just anathema to me to the founding principles of this republic," Hensarling said while speaking last month at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Financial reform advocates argue the Choice Act would leave the U.S. economy vulnerable to another financial crisis.

"It is bad for consumers, it is bad for investors, and it's bad for the stability of the American economy — which is bad for all of us," said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform. "People believe there should be more — not less — regulation of Wall Street. They're worried about regulators being too weak and being too afraid to take on the big guys. Not about their being tough."

"The bill even specifically exempts payday and car title lenders — notorious for springing devastating debt traps for their already vulnerable customers — from any regulation," added Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.

The top lobbyist for the banking industry — which supports parts of the Choice Act — says the bill would bring relief to community banks, which many say have been overburdened by Dodd-Frank's onerous, one-size-fits-all regulations.

"We are not seeking to roll back all of the policy response, all of Dodd-Frank," said Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association. "That's not our intention. Our intention is to acknowledge what many regulators and legislators will tell you both publicly and privately, which is aspects of Dodd-Frank overshot."

The Senate has been working on a separate bill that is more focused on loosening regulations on community banks. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellin has endorsed efforts to "mitigate the regulatory burden" when it comes to small banks.

Frank: "You don't get everything 100 percent right the first time"

Former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts agrees — despite having his name attached to the regulations, alongside that of former Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

"Anytime you pass a very complicated piece of legislation, you don't get everything 100 percent right the first time," said Frank, who is the former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Frank says his namesake financial reform law has been too restrictive on smaller banks. He also believes the threshold used to identify other banks "as too big to fail" should be higher.

"Beyond that what you have are Republicans — including the chairman of the committee, Mr. Hensarling, who is a very honorable, very pleasant, deeply rigidly ideological conservative who is essentially against any regulation."

Democratic opposition can stop the bill in the Senate

Even though some Democrats recognize there are some problems with Dodd-Frank, they are unified in opposing the Choice Act.

"The Wrong Choice Act is a vehicle for Donald Trump's agenda to get rid of financial regulation and help out Wall Street. It's an invitation for another Great Recession, or worse," said California Rep. Maxine Waters, currently the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Hensarling's bill is a revised version of legislation he proposed last year, which stalled in Congress. Waters says it's no surprise that Republicans see success in their sights this time around.

"With the majority that they have in the House and the Senate and President Trump, this is their big opportunity to deregulate, deregulate, deregulate — and they're going to go for it," she said.

But the GOP will run into obstacles in the Senate, because Republicans in the upper chamber don't have the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation.

"If I live my life thinking that something might not pass the Senate, I would never even get up and bother to go to work," he said.</s>The U.S. House votes mostly along party lines to pass a major rollback of Dodd-Frank regulations, but the legislation is certain to be substantially rewritten in the Senate.

The House bill would unwind major parts of Dodd-Frank by relieving healthy banks of some regulatory requirements and forcing failing firms through bankruptcy rather than a liquidation process spearheaded by the regulators.

The bill as written is a virtual nonstarter in the Senate, with opposition to most aspects from Democrats and some Republicans, and serves more as a "symbolic victory" for Republicans, says Brown Brothers Harriman's Sean Tuffy.</s>House lawmakers are poised to pass the "crown jewel" of the GOP-led regulatory reform effort on Thursday, effectively gutting the Dodd-Frank financial regulations that were put in place during the Obama administration.

Called the Financial Choice Act, the Republican bill seeks to undo significant parts of the 2010 financial reform law.

Crafted by House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, the bill is expected to pass despite vehement objections by Democrats to preserve the sweeping law aimed at preventing another financial crisis and protecting American consumers. For any bill to pass in the House, it requires at least 218 votes.

Republicans criticize the Dodd-Frank regulations as the primary driver for anemic economic growth in the U.S. and for enshrining too-big-to-fail, which they say paves the way for future taxpayer bailouts of the country's biggest banks.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Hensarling's bill would keep the GOP's promise to cut onerous financial regulations in order to help create jobs and foster economic growth.

"We see the Financial Choice Act as the crown jewel of this effort," Ryan said at a press conference. "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."

Hensarling's bill would give the president the power to fire the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a consumer watchdog agency created under Dodd-Frank, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at any time for any -- or no -- reason.

It also gives Congress purview over the CFPB's budget, meaning lawmakers could defund the agency entirely.

The GOP proposal would also bar the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from overseeing the so-called living will process, which requires banks to write up plans on how they would safely be unwound in the event of a collapse. The FDIC and the Fed are the two regulators responsible for overseeing this requirement under the 2010 law.

Democrats objected to the bill calling it the "Wrong Choice Act." They say it would return the country to the "regulatory Stone Age" and be a disaster for the U.S. financial system.

"We are putting taxpayers again in harm's way," said New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney, speaking on the House floor on Wednesday.

Related: Trump wants to revive a 1933 banking law. What that means is very unclear

Minority lawmakers also argue Hensarling's bill would gut consumer protections and allow banks to make risky investments that required taxpayers to come to the rescue of the nation's largest financial institutions almost a decade earlier.

In an editorial posted on Medium this week, Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House panel, said "Donald Trump and Republicans want to go back to the bad old days and lead all of us down the road to another financial crisis."

Should the House bill pass, its destiny will be in the hands of the Senate.

Senate Republicans will likely seek to craft their own companion measure to overhaul the Dodd-Frank regulations.

Led by chairman Mike Crapo, the GOP senators say they want to take a bipartisan approach to creating a regulatory relief bill for Wall Street and community banks. Crapo has been working closely with his counterpart Sherrod Brown, a top Democrat on the panel, to find common ground.

"Democrats have shown we're willing to work with Republicans to tailor the rules where it makes sense, but not if it means killing the reforms that have made the financial system safer and fairer," Brown said in a statement.

Crapo has vowed to work with all stakeholders, including the Trump White House and regulators, "to strike a balance" in achieving smart regulation that spurs the U.S. economy.

The Idaho Republican has set his own target of early 2018 to pass major bank reform legislation.

Related: Wall Street hates the Volcker Rule. Will Trump finally kill it?

Unlike the House, Republicans will need to sway at least eight Democrats to pass a regulatory reform bill to cross the 60-vote threshold. GOP senators currently hold 52 seats in the Senate.

Those who closely follow the debate believe there's no chance Hensarling's bill would pass the Senate as is. Rather, they expect the upper chamber to advance a separate regulatory relief bill of their own.

"We continue to see no path forward for this legislation in the Senate," said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Cowen & Co., in a note to clients ahead of the House vote.

Senate Republicans will have two options to advance President Trump's promise to dismantle the "horrendous" Dodd-Frank law.

They could try to pass a regulatory relief bill through reconciliation, which only requires a 50-vote majority to pass the Senate. That would likely mean a smaller number of limited changes to the Dodd-Frank Act rather than a major single legislative package.

Or they could leave the 2010 regulatory reform law intact and put the onus on regulators, like the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to rewrite some of the rules.

"Much of the language in Dodd-Frank is vague and gives a lot of discretion to regulators on how they write the rules so, over time, I expect the Trump administration will amend some of the Dodd-Frank rules," said Brian Gardner, a policy analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, in a podcast.

Related: Trump's pick for No. 2 spot at Treasury drops out

Any changes to the Dodd-Frank regulations, however, require the approval of those in top regulatory posts at three bank regulatory agencies -- the Fed, the FDIC and the Comptroller of the Currency -- several of which the president has yet to nominate. Trump has yet to fill three open slots on the Fed board, including a new regulatory czar.

On Monday evening, the president tapped Joseph Otting, a former colleague of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at OneWest to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He will oversee more than 1,000 lenders, including big Wall Street banks. His position still requires Senate approval.

The spotlight on the financial reform this week could "convince the White House that it's time to act on these key nominations," said Seiberg.</s>Under consideration in the House of Representatives today: a big Republican platform item. Specifically, the rollback of Dodd-Frank financial regulations. This comes in the form of a bill called the Financial Choice Act. Here’s what’s in the bill and what could become law.

Click the audio player above to hear the full story.</s>WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted largely along party lines to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, a move that is expected to die in the Senate but open the door to revamping or eliminating regulations that came out of the 2007-09 financial crisis.

The bill, called the CHOICE act, was approved by a vote of 233-to-186. Authored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Republican, it gives banks a choice between complying with Dodd-Frank or holding onto more capital. It also restructures the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created under Dodd-Frank to guard individuals against fraud in lending. (Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Leslie Adler)</s>Remember when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fined Wells Fargo $185 million for creating unapproved customer accounts to meet sales quotas last September? Under new legislation passed by the United States House of Representatives yesterday -- the Financial CHOICE (Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs) Act -- the CFPB's power to regulate and fine the financial industry would be curtailed significantly. This could have an impact on real estate agents and brokers as the CFPB is tasked with not only enforcing new mortgage regulations under Dodd-Frank, but also regulations like RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, which dictates how agents and brokers may interact financially with title and mortgage partners. The nearly-600-page bill with a 148-page comprehensive summary and a four-page executive summary is dense, to say the least, but can shed light on what the problems with the CFPB's regulatory powers currently...</s>The House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that would roll back key parts of the Dodd-Frank bill aimed at Wall Street and financial industry regulatory reform which was passed in the wake of the mortgage meltdown.

The House voted 233-186 to approve the Financial CHOICE Act. The bill would give banks a choice between complying with Dodd-Frank or holding onto more capital.

Critics also say it would eliminate the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Dodd-Frank, and greatly reduce its ability to regulate.

The bill must still go to the Senate. The Senate is less motivated to pass a repeal of the financial oversight legislation. Instead, the Senate is more interested in a broad-based bipartisan bill that focuses on economic growth and could include some financial regulation reform, NBC News has reported.

President Donald Trump has pledged to repeal the law. In February Trump called Dodd-Frank a "disaster."

In a meeting with business leaders in April, Trump singled out Dodd-Frank as an example of what he called "horrendous" regulations, and pledged to fix it.

"We’re going to be doing things that are going to be very good for the banking industry so that the banks can lend money to people that need it," Trump said at the time.

The CHOICE act faces almost no chance of passage in the Senate, CNBC reported.

Sean Tuffy, who oversees global regulatory intelligence for Brown Brothers Harriman, told CNBC that "This is a symbolic victory for the House Republicans."

Related: Why Republicans Want to Declaw Nation's Consumer Financial Watchdog Agency

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said "Every promise of Dodd-Frank has been broken." He said the bill will end what he called bank bailouts.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, ranking member of the financial services committee, called the CHOICE Act "one of the worst bills I have seen in my time in Congress" and "a vehicle for Donald Trump's agenda to deregulate and help out Wall Street."

"This bill would create vast harm, and lead us right back to the bad old days," Waters said.</s>The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a 90-day extension of funding for road, bridge and rail construction projects, just days ahead of a weekend deadline.

The Senate followed the U.S. House of Representatives, which passed the measure earlier on Thursday and it now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.
The United States House of Representatives pass a bill ending Dodd–Frank regulations. The bill now goes to the Senate where it is expected to not go through.