House GOP Budget Would “Revisit” Dodd-Frank

By Sarah Borchersen-Keto, CCH Washington News Bureau, Contributing Author, the CCH Federal Banking Law Reporter, April 6, 2011.

Republicans in the House of Representatives unveiled their 2012 budget proposal, which includes a plan to “revisit” the Dodd-Frank Act and end the bailouts of failed financial institutions. The budget also proposes to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and stop the government from picking “winners and losers” across the economy.

“Although the bill is dubbed ‘Wall Street Reform,’ it actually intensifies the problem of too-big-to-fail by giving large, interconnected financial institutions advantages that small firms will not enjoy,” the budget document states.

Republicans note that under the new financial regulatory system the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “now has the authority to access taxpayer dollars in order to bail out the creditors of large, ‘systemically significant’ financial institutions.”

They add that the Congressional Budget Office’s expected cost for this new authority is $26 billion. “In other words, another large-scale financial crisis in which creditors are guaranteed to get government bailouts would cost taxpayers much, much, more,” according to the GOP.

Meanwhile, the GOP budget proposes the eventual elimination of Fannie and Freddie, along with winding down their government guarantee and ending taxpayer subsidies. It also supports increasing the guarantee fees Fannie and Freddie charge lenders.

David Min, Associate Director of Financial Markets Policy at the Center for American Progress, said the GOP plan “is essentially pretending that Wall Street had no role in the past decade’s housing and financial crises and providing their benefactors with an enormous deregulatory gift—one worth many billions of dollars.”

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