Joins Republican Banking Committee Colleagues in Sending Letter to Biden Administration
U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined every Republican on the Senate Banking Committee in continuing their call for financial regulators to withdraw the Basel III Endgame proposal that would raise bank capital requirements.
As the public comment period for the proposed rule closed, the members sent a letter to the Federal Reserve (Fed), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency highlighting the agencies’ continued failure to provide a thorough economic analysis justifying the proposal’s merits and to address concerns on the proposal’s outsized impact on access to credit and important financial services for those who need it most.
Daines and his colleagues wrote, “As we noted in our November 12, 2023, letter to each of you, your agencies have still yet to justify the need for this proposal with any sufficient economic analysis or proof that the banking system is currently under capitalized. Since we last wrote to you, our concerns have not been mitigated, and testimony from the November 14 and December 6, 2023, Senate Banking Committee hearings has only deepened our resolve that this proposal is flawed and must be withdrawn.”
The senators continued, “Following the November 14 hearing, on December 6, 2023, we heard testimony from the CEOs of the eight largest banks in this nation, which largely discussed how the proposal would hinder economic growth and reduce lending to households and businesses…During that hearing and since, we continue to hear particularly concerning testimonies about the outsized negative impacts the proposal would have on minority communities, especially LMI and minority borrowers.”
“As backdrop to all of this, the Federal Reserve seemingly acknowledged that it did not appropriately consider the impacts of the proposal when it began an additional data collection in October 2023…How can we as legislators, or any of the American public, be asked to weigh in on a proposal, the effects of which the proposal’s authors do not yet fully comprehend?…Given that the public comment period for the proposal closed today, it is unclear how the public may be able to weigh in on the results of the data collection and whether adequate data will be released to allow for independent analysis.”
To read the full letter, click here.
Daines first joined his Republican colleagues in urging the Fed to immediately withdraw this proposal during the public comment period.
Last month, Daines pressed leaders of the nation’s largest banks on the effects of the Biden administration’s recent proposal on small businesses’ borrowing capabilities.
In November, Daines pressed the Fed Vice Chairman Michael Barr about the new Basel III Endgame proposal that would limit credit availability to Montana small businesses and Montana farmers and ranchers.
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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Rachel Dumke