By Rose Oswald Poels, WBA president and CEO
This spring continues to be very active with the need for advocacy at the federal level. WBA hosted two Washington trips for bankers in conjunction with ABA and ICBA’s Summits, with the most recent one occurring two weeks ago with ICBA for their annual Capital Summit. This year, we had a total of 30 bankers join WBA between both trips.
The timing of our Hill visits at the end of April was fortuitous as both the Farm Bill and digital assets were hot topics. In fact, while we were on the Hill on April 30, the House passed the Farm Bill which was very exciting to witness. The cryptocurrency industry continues to actively lobby against the banking industry on a provision of concern related to the payment of interest, yield and/or rewards on stablecoin accounts. In both March and April, our banker delegation actively discussed this threat to traditional banking highlighting that a loss of deposits translates directly to a significant loss of lending ability. Stablecoin issuers, exchanges and others are not regulated in the same manner as banks and do not invest back in local communities. Everyone in your bank needs to send grassroots messages today to our U.S. Senators. Please protect our industry by sending a message through either the ABA or ICBA action centers.
During our spring meetings, we also discussed the need for additional regulatory relief including, among many other items, legislation that would adjust thresholds so fewer banks and their small business customers would need to comply with Section 1071 data collection requirements. Other topics covered included the need to tax credit unions that are $1 billion or larger (or, at minimum, the need for a congressional hearing on their use of the tax subsidy), FDIC deposit insurance reform, the SCAM Act to help protect against consumer fraud, and interchange legislation.
The Wisconsin bankers who joined Tyler Foti and me on the recent trip found it to be very educational and productive, like those who joined me back in March. Without question, WBA is more impactful when constituent bankers help deliver messages to elected officials. I encourage you all to consider joining WBA next year for one of our two annual Washington trips, or later this year when we travel to D.C. to meet with regulators (not legislators) on September 28–29.
I want to thank the following bankers who joined WBA on the recent April trip for taking time out of their busy schedules to actively advocate for the banking industry:
- Justin Adamski, The Pineries Bank, Stevens Point
- Joel Frier, Oostburg State Bank
- Dave Feldhaus, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago
- Mike Gargaro, Citizens First Bank, Trempealeau
- Jeff Gruetzmacher, Royal Bank, Lancaster
- Shay Horton, Cumberland Federal Savings Bank
- Shane Ilstrup, Citizens First Bank, Trempealeau
- Sue Loken, Lake Ridge Bank, Middleton
- Josh Marron, Park Bank, Madison
- Mike Olson, The Bank of Brodhead
- Butch Pomeroy, International Bank of Amherst
- Lonnie Przybylski, International Bank of Amherst
- Kevin Ravenscroft, The Peoples Community Bank, Mazomanie
- Julie Redfern, Lake Ridge Bank, Monona
- Jennifer Stein, Horicon Bank
- Steve Walber, Fox Valley Savings Bank, Fond du Lac
Thank you all for your role in amplifying the voice of Wisconsin banking! I encourage all bankers to keep up the momentum and contact our senators! Use the following action centers to urge policymakers to close the stablecoin yield and rewards loophole in pending digital asset legislation set to be marked up Thursday, May 14.
