Dear Chairman Shelby and Ranking Member Brown:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, I am writing to express our opposition to Senator Shelby’s draft legislation, “The Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015,” scheduled for mark-up in the Senate Banking Committee this week. Senator Shelby’s legislation represents an overreach by Republican Banking Committee members that would undoubtedly weaken important consumer and investor protections established in the Dodd-Frank law.
The 2008 financial crisis nearly brought down the world’s financial system. Domestically, the crisis resulted in the loss of homes, jobs, and retirement savings for millions of Americans, including thousands of our members. Working people suffered the consequences of Wall Street greed and, in 2010, many in Congress worked to pass Dodd-Frank to prevent another crisis from doing the same. The AFL-CIO then and now strongly supports Dodd-Frank, and we have consistently spoken out in opposition to all attempts to undermine the reform that was achieved in 2010.
Senator Shelby’s draft legislation is yet another attempt to roll back these vital protections. Among other concerns, Titles II and III of the Shelby draft legislation would raise major new barriers to the proper oversight of some of the country’s largest financial institutions, including banks that hold hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and major non-bank financial institutions, such as AIG. Further, the draft legislation removes critically needed protections against high-risk, high-fee loans and the practices that allowed abuses in the mortgage lending process that led to the 2008 crisis.
As such, we ask that you reject the “The Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015.” The Democratic substitute offered by Senator Brown and supported by all 10 Democratic members of the committee represents a more targeted approach to providing regulatory relief to America’s community banks and credit unions—something that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed is needed.
Sincerely,
William Samuel, Director
Government Affairs Department