Full House Vote on CHOICE Act Slated for Week of June 5th

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to take a floor vote of all members on the Financial CHOICE Act the week of June 5th. The bill remains mostly unchanged from the one that passed the House Financial Services Committee last month, although a provision that would have repealed limits on debit card transaction fees was scrapped. While the CHOICE Act is expected to pass the House with partisan Republican support, it would require significant assistance from Democrats to move beyond the Senate and up to the President’s desk.

 
The Financial CHOICE Act proposes sweeping changes to the Dodd-Frank Act, a law that imposed stringent regulations on banking and other financial services following the mortgage crisis of 2010. One major target of the CHOICE Act is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency created by Dodd-Frank with supervisory, rulemaking, and enforcement authority over consumer financial markets. At a House Financial Services hearing on the embattled agency back in April, CFPB Director Richard Cordray fielded a number of questions on the agency’s structure (and a pending court case on its constitutionality), its enforcement activities, and the viability of the CFPB’s rulemaking practices. The CHOICE Act would limit the CFPB to the enforcement of existing federal consumer finance laws and strip the agency of its other powers.