Several House Democrats supported incremental changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in committee votes on Tuesday, and in doing so, they put themselves on record as disagreeing, at least in part, with the Obama administration and liberal stalwarts like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), according to a commentary in today’s Morning Consult. At least one-third of Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted in favor of two bills to change how a “systemically important financial institution,” (SIFI) is designated under the law. Such a designation, made by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC, subjects banks to more rigorous compliance standards. First, eight Democrats voted to remove a $50 billion asset threshold for designating banks as systemically important. The bill would replace the $50 billion threshold with a flexible designation system that takes into account the size of the bank, its interconnectedness within the financial system, its mix of activities, and other factors in order to determine its systemic importance.
