Tag: bill

Another Bill Passes

Washington is a flurry of news – ongoing negative coverage on the President’s historic meeting with North Korea, Majority Leader McConnell’s decision to cancel the Senate’s August recess due to unprecedented Democratic obstruction of the President’s appointees, and Nancy Pelosi raining on America’s LOW unemployment parade.

Meanwhile, over in the House of Representatives, I’ve been hard at work on the Financial Services Committee to continue delivering relief to Main Street. Getting S.2155, the most significant rollback of the Dodd-Frank Act in nearly a decade (which included my Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) across the finish line was a major accomplishment, but it was just the first step. Last week, the Financial Services Committee unanimously passed a new bill I introduced, the Main Street Growth Act, 56-0. It’s not every day the other side of the aisle agrees with Republicans, but some solutions are so common sense, there’s no question.

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Repealing the Dodd-Frank Disaster

Repealing the Dodd-Frank Disaster

Yesterday, the U.S. House sent the largest pro-growth, deregulation bill in decades to President Trump’s desk. Today, I was fortunate to be at the White House and watch as he signed it into law.  S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act will roll back some of Dodd-Frank’s most harmful regulations to small financial banks and credit unions.

The bottom line: Dodd-Frank did not work. Both chambers (and both sides of the aisle) agree that the “one size fits all” regulation style from Washington has done little but destroy economic potential and left Main Street – quite literally – to pay the price for a crisis for which they were not responsible.

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WSJ : Lawmakers Seek to Ease Mortgage-Disclosure Rule for Small Lenders

This article on H.R. 2954, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, was published in the Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2018. Read the full article here.

Excerpts:

The legislation would allow a significant proportion of community banks and credit unions to escape reporting requirements that came into effect this month. The new requirements fall under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, a law enacted in 1975 to curb discrimination against minority borrowers.

The bill introduced by Rep. Tom Emmer (R., Minn.) has a good chance of becoming law because a broad Senate financial-deregulation bill, introduced in November with bipartisan support, includes a similar provision. Mr. Emmer said he expected a few House Democrats to support his bill.

The bill is expected to cover roughly a quarter of the U.S. mortgage market, Mr. Emmer said in an interview.

“These thresholds will still require the Wells Fargos, Bank of Americas and JPMorgans of the world to report data but it will provide relief to little guys, community banks and credit unions,” he said.

Financial institutions, particularly community banks and credit unions, have complained about new disclosure requirements, citing compliance costs and data-security concerns.

Specifically, the legislation would expand the exemption to lenders that originate fewer than 500 closed-end mortgage loans in each of the two preceding calendar years, up from 25 loans currently. The threshold for open-end home-equity lines of credit would be raised to 500 loans a year from 100 loans currently.