Forum Post: Senators Want To Give Wall Street Lobbyists New ‘Powerful Set Of Tools’ To Delay Financial Regulations

House and Senate Republicans succeeded in watering down some of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act’s toughest new rules before it became law in 2010. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Mark Warner (D-VA) are pushing new legislation that could make it even harder to implement new financial regulations that manage to become law. The bill could “delay a number of rules for the financial industry” by giving the White House the ability second-guess independent regulatory agencies and order additional reviews of the effects of new rules, as the New York Times reports:

The measure, which a Senate committee is planning to debate this month, aims to empower the president in the rule-writing process. The proposal would allow the White House to second-guess major rules and mandate that agencies carefully study the economic effects of new regulation. The change could, in effect, delay a number of rules for the financial industry. [...]

The bill, introduced in the Senate last month, would offer a path to challenge the Dodd-Frank law, the sprawling regulatory overhaul passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Regulators have already encountered significant delays as the financial industry mounts legal challenges to the law.

New financial regulations have already faced significant hurdles in the implementation process thanks to lawsuits and other delays. This legislation would make those delays even worse, particularly in the hands of a president who does not want to implement regulations on Wall Street, according to the advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform.

“Although it may appear to be a simple change in administrative requirements for cost benefit analysis, this legislation would give Wall Street lobbyists another powerful set of tools to delay and derail the implementation of financial safeguards that are needed to protect our economy,” AFR wrote in a letter opposing the law. “Independent financial agencies already face extensive requirements for economic analysis, as well as mechanisms of appeal for those requirements. This legislation would add an unnecessary, costly, and time-consuming additional layer of requirements to the process of completing oversight rules for our largest banks.”

Source