The next Congress may be forced to revisit two key components of financial regulatory reform, making the outcome of Tuesday's elections potentially crucial, CNBC reported yesterday. Federal courts this year have challenged the structure of an agency set up to protect consumers and the ability of regulators to designate financial institutions "too big to fail." Both bodies in question were established by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and have been at the center of bitter partisan rancor over how Washington polices the financial industry and business in the Obama era. Despite challenges from Republicans, the work of rule-writing under Dodd-Frank has largely rested in the hands of regulators since being passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010. But the legal challenges threaten to punt these issues back to Capitol Hill, where they would be handled very differently by a Republican-controlled Congress. The first issue concerns the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency tasked with protecting consumers that was established by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The second major issue that Congress might have to address is the Financial Stability Oversight Council's ability to determine which financial institutions are big enough to be held to special standards.
