U.S. Senate passes Republican-backed bill to weaken Dodd-Frank financial reforms

The Unit­ed States Sen­ate vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly today to begin dis­man­tling the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act of 2010, approv­ing Ida­ho Sen­a­tor Mike Crapo’s S. 2155 by a vote of six­ty-sev­en to thirty-one.

Every Repub­li­can vot­ed in favor of the bill, and they were joined by about a third of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus. The remain­ing Democ­rats vot­ed no.

Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren, who led the fight against S. 2155 for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus, decried the bill in a strong­ly-word­ed floor speech.

“What does it say about Wash­ing­ton [D.C.] that Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats can’t come togeth­er to sup­port [sen­si­ble] gun reforms or solu­tions for work­ing fam­i­lies — but can come togeth­er to dereg­u­late big banks on the tenth anniver­sary of the start of the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis?,” she asked mid­way through the speech.

Answer­ing her own rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, she pro­ceed­ed to declare: “Here’s what I think it says: Wash­ing­ton [D.C.] has become com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the real prob­lems in peo­ple’s lives. This place works great for the peo­ple who can hire fan­cy lob­by­ists and write big checks, but it does­n’t work for any­one else.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Michael Ben­net, Tom Carp­er, Chris Coons, Joe Don­nel­ly, Mag­gie Has­san, Hei­di Heitkamp, Doug Jones, Tim Kaine, Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, Bill Nel­son, Gary Peters, Jeanne Sha­heen, Deb­bie Stabenow, Jon Teser, and Mark Warn­er did not heed her call to vote nay.

They and inde­pen­dent Angus King broke ranks to sup­port the bill, which lob­by­ists for the bank­ing indus­try want passed.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Don Young and Lisa Murkows­ki (AK); Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Jon Tester (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR)

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer and Deputy Leader Dick Durbin also vot­ed nay, as did Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Dianne Fein­stein, who is being chal­lenged by Kevin de Leon.

Nei­ther Mur­ray nor Cantwell have issued a state­ment on today’s vote.

But Ore­gon’s Ron Wyden did.

“After the Equifax secu­ri­ty breach and Wells Far­go cus­tomer abus­es, it’s clear there’s more work to be done when it comes to pro­tect­ing Amer­i­can con­sumers from big banks,” Wyden said. “Yet instead of work­ing to pro­vide more pro­tec­tions for hard­work­ing fam­i­lies, this bill stacks the deck in favor of banks.

“Banks just got a big Repub­li­can tax cut,” Wyden not­ed. “They don’t need an exemp­tion from rules pro­tect­ing con­sumers, now, too. I vot­ed against this bill because banks don’t need any more help. Con­sumers do.”

So did Ore­gon’s Jeff Merkley.

“Work­ing Amer­i­cans have not for­got­ten what hap­pens when banks write their own rules, and nei­ther should we,” Merkley said. “It was not so long ago when mil­lions of Amer­i­cans lost their homes, their jobs, and their sav­ings because we allowed big banks to police them­selves. Has the Sen­ate for­got­ten so soon?

“A ter­ri­ble pro­vi­sion in this bill allows small com­mu­ni­ty banks to start trad­ing deriv­a­tives – big bets on the future price of stocks, secu­ri­ties, and currency.”

“It makes no sense to have shut down the Wall Street Casi­no only to reopen casi­nos in our com­mu­ni­ty banks. This bill also opens the door to preda­to­ry prac­tices in the man­u­fac­tured and mod­u­lar homes indus­try – enabling cor­po­ra­tions to prey on some of the most vul­ner­a­ble work­ing Americans.”

“And it weak­ens require­ments that help fight dis­crim­i­na­tion in the home mort­gage mar­ket. This is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able. The bot­tom line is that this bill takes us back­ward — in a direc­tion that the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans dis­agree with.”

“Work­ing Amer­i­cans have nev­er asked for high­er bank prof­its that come at the expense of con­sumer pro­tec­tions and tax­pay­er-fund­ed bailouts. The Sen­ate should scrap this mis­guid­ed piece of leg­is­la­tion and start over with a bill that puts con­sumers and work­ing Amer­i­cans first.”

NPI thanks Sen­a­tors Wyden and Merkley for their strong and out­spo­ken oppo­si­tion to this awful wolf-in-sheep­’s-cloth­ing leg­is­la­tion. They and Sen­a­tors Mur­ray and Cantwell rep­re­sent­ed our region well with their no votes.

We are very dis­ap­point­ed in our region’s oth­er sen­a­tors for vot­ing in favor of this bill. Should this leg­is­la­tion pass Con­gress, it will demon­strate once again that we have failed to learn any mean­ing­ful lessons from the Great Recession.

This vote reminds us that greed is a very pow­er­ful force in our nation’s cap­i­tal. Trump epit­o­mizes greed, and he has been a bad influ­ence on Con­gress, which was already lob­by­ist-ori­ent­ed as opposed to peo­ple-cen­tric. Greed’s present choke­hold over our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is caus­ing deep dam­age to our nation that will take a very long time to undo. It’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant that state gov­ern­ments respond to bad bills like these by pass­ing stronger con­sumer pro­tec­tion laws.