Amendments the House has approved to a wide-ranging funding bill would boost outlays to fight money laundering and let banks keep accepting Mexican matricula consular cards for identification.
A rule the Treasury Department issued last year lets banks accept the ID cards, which Mexico issues to its citizens who live in the United States. Late Tuesday, in debate on a bill that would fund the Treasury and other government agencies, the House scuttled a provision that would have banned enforcement of the rule. The vote was 222 to 177.
Supporters of the ban said that the cards are unreliable and that law enforcement officials distrust them. But the Bush administration, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Financial Services Committee, and the banking industry said banning their use for ID would create confusion about anti-laundering requirements
The House also voted 360 to 37 on Tuesday for an amendment sponsored by Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., to add $25.5 million to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s budget. The money would go for technology and additional employees to help it fight terrorist financing and money laundering.
The House will resume debate on the bill next week.
The legislation would also bar the Treasury from finalizing a long-pending rule in the next fiscal year to let banks enter the real estate brokerage and property management businesses.
Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-Ohio, the House Financial Services chairman, has long opposed using appropriations bills to settle policy matters. Nevertheless, no attempt is expected to delete from this bill a moratorium on the Treasury’s using government funds in the next fiscal year to finalize the rule.
In the Senate, the Appropriations Committee approved on Tuesday its version of the legislation, which contains a stronger provision to bar banks from real estate. The Senate bill would permanently prohibit regulators from letting banks offer real estate brokerage and property management services. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala, backs the provision.
The banking industry hopes to eliminate at least the permanent ban when the House and Senate meet to reconcile the two bills — or if Congress wraps the Treasury funding bill with other appropriations measures in a so-called omnibus bill.
In a symbolic move, Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Ron Paul, R-Tex., offered Wednesday but then withdrew an amendment that would have prohibited the Treasury from defending the regulations in court. Their aim was to get House Financial Services to schedule a vote on a bill to overturn regulations that exempt national banks from a host of state and local consumer protection laws.
The regulations represent “a drastic expansion” of the power of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and “greatly exceed the OCC’s congressionally granted preemption authority,” Rep. Gutierrez said in a floor debate, before withdrawing the amendment. “We’re going to continue to have these debates until we have a vote … on whether the OCC can or cannot do this.”
