By Rose Oswald Poels, WBA president and CEO
Many of you have heard me say that this is an incredibly busy year of advocacy work particularly at the federal level. One of my articles last month highlighted the incredible work the WBA team is doing on the industry’s behalf responding to numerous federal regulatory proposals. The same is true on the federal legislative front. I am very proud of the grassroots advocacy by bankers across the state to help advance the industry’s position on all legislation including the ones mentioned here. But, as you will see below, our work is not yet done!
On July 11th, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was enacted into law without the President’s signature after passing through Congress. This important legislation contains many provisions designed to remove barriers to housing construction and offer consumers greater affordability. For the banking community, the law includes several helpful regulatory relief provisions such as tailoring supervision, adjusting rules around brokered and reciprocal deposits, and appraisal reforms, among other changes. In the House, Wisconsin’s congressional delegation voted on a bipartisan basis in favor of passage of the bill, while in the Senate, Rep. Baldwin voted in favor, but Rep. Johnson voted against passage of the bill. The advocacy of WBA members through grassroots communications and meetings in Washington D.C. helped achieve such positive votes from our delegation.
The Main Street Capital Access Act is another important piece of legislation that passed the House by a wide margin of 270-155 on July 21, with the Wisconsin delegation voting along party lines. This bill is also intended to ease banking regulations, spur new community bank formations, and tailor supervisory burdens for smaller and regional lenders. The legislation is now over in the Senate but timing of its consideration is uncertain. WBA will continue our advocacy with our U.S. Senators on this bill and ask for member grassroots support if it moves.
Finally, the CLARITY Act continues to garner much attention, and we are in a real fight with the well-funded and outspoken crypto industry. While it is questionable whether this will even pass this session anymore, the banking industry’s grassroots advocacy with our U.S. Senators must continue. Just yesterday, Stand With Crypto, a U.S.-based crypto advocacy organization, announced on X that “senators’ votes on the CLARITY Act will be recorded in its public scorecards on behalf of its 3 million U.S. advocates.” This threat from the crypto industry in addition to the millions of dollars they are putting into the upcoming elections puts significant pressure on Senators ahead of a potential vote. It is critical for the industry to remind our Senators that banks are already losing money to the crypto industry, and that real risk to our ability to make loans at current levels will materialize if the narrow provision the banking industry wants changed in the law closing the loophole on the payment of interest/yield/rewards is not done.
Please join in our advocacy efforts to help get narrow, specific language added into the CLARITY Act before a final vote by emailing our U.S. Senators today. Letters may be sent through the ABA or ICBA Grassroot Alerts tools. A helpful Myth vs Facts resource has also been created to dispel inaccurate information being shared by the crypto industry regarding our industry’s concerns to close the payment of interest/yield/rewards loophole.
