On November 16, 2016, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, gave a speech to the Exchequer Club laying out a potential financial regulatory agenda for the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans to pursue. He began by calling for thwarting the Department of Labor's fiduciary rule, as well as preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from regulating small dollar, "payday" loans.
Hensarling called on Congress to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act and replace it with "The Financial Choice Act." He cited the proposed Act's requirements that new financial regulation pass a cost-benefit test; its mandate for the budgets of all the financial regulatory agencies (except for the Federal Reserve Board's conduct of monetary policy) to come into the Congressional budgeting process; and its proposal to replace regulatory agencies headed by a single director — the CFPB, OCC and FHFA — with bipartisan commissions. He also called for the repeal of the Chevron doctrine and for a new subchapter of the Bankruptcy Code to be added to address the failure of a complex financial institution (in lieu of the Orderly Liquidation Authority under the Dodd-Frank Act).
Hensarling then praised the "PATH Act," a Republican proposal reliant on private capital to reshape the housing finance system. The act would lessen government's role in housing finance, remove "artificial" barriers to private capital and provide "clear [and] transparent" rules to market participants and disclosure to consumers. He concluded by highlighting what he presented as the US's "unsustainable" national debt and calling for bipartisan effort to negotiate the reforms he discussed.
Congressman Hensarling's remarks are available at: http://financialservices.house.gov/blog/?postid=401199
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