Letter to Congressional Leadership - Oppose Efforts to Gut Wall Street Reform Via Funding Bills

Letter

Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Reid, Speaker Ryan, and Minority Leader Pelosi:

We appreciate your continued work to fund the government. While we are opposed to the inclusion of all inappropriate and ideological policy riders to year-end funding legislation, as the Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the House Committee on Financial Services, we are particularly concerned about the inclusion of policy riders related to issues under the jurisdiction of our Committees.

Specially, Congress must not include in end-of-year funding legislation any riders designed to repeal, undermine, or delay any provisions of Wall Street reform, including those targeted at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, altering the bankruptcy code for financial institutions, changing our housing finance system, preventing the Securities and Exchange Commission from moving forward with rulemaking to require disclosure of political campaign spending, or other similar roll-backs.

During the second session of this Congress, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs has not held a single legislative markup. Committees have a responsibility to thoroughly consider legislation, build consensus, and move it through the Committee. Given the lack of legislative action by the Committee, it would be irresponsible for you to use the appropriations process as a replacement for Committee consideration of legislation through regular order. Financial services issues are extremely technical, highly complicated and can have serious repercussions for the economy, the financial markets, and consumers. Moving such legislation on an appropriations bill without appropriate Committee consideration is fraught with risk and should not be an acceptable solution for a Committee's refusal to act.

There are important issues facing our nation's consumers and financial institutions. Wall Street Reform was Congress' response to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It has strengthened our nation's financial stability and provided much-needed consumer protections to millions of American families. Given the recent scandal at Wells Fargo, where the banks' employees were under pressure from bank management to open as many customer accounts as possible, it's clear that our financial markets need stronger rules and oversight, not less. We remain opposed to efforts to include any provisions that repeal, undermine, or delay consumer or investor protections, or deregulate our financial system in any end-of-the-year funding legislation.

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