WASHINGTON - Sen. Richard C. Shelby said Tuesday that within two weeks he will introduce an expansive bill to pare back regulations affecting banks.
"We're going to have a major piece of legislation dealing with deregulation," the Alabama Republican said after a Senate Governmental Affairs hearing that looked at regulations lawmakers regard as burdensome.
The Shelby bill will contain provisions addressing the Community Reinvestment Act, Truth-in-Lending, Truth-in-Savings, and director and officer liability, among other things, he said.
The hearing addressed the flurry of proposals circulating in the Senate that aim to overhaul the federal regulatory process.
One such measure, the Regulatory Transition Act, would place a moratorium on regulations and could affect deposit insurance premium cuts and Community Reinvestment Act reform. The GOP initiative drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers on the panel.
"It deflects important energy and effort from the real challenge, which is substantively improving the regulations," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
The measure would not freeze any regulations that aim to "repeal, narrow, or streamline a rule, regulation, administrative process or reduce an existing regulatory burden," countered Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., the bill's sponsor.
Sen. Levin said the moratorium could "create a whole host of problems and tie the bureaucracy ... up in knots trying to implement it when the time could be better spent improving cost-benefit and risk analysis," Sen. Levin added.
