78 Democrats Vote to Weaken a Key Wall Street Regulation

Today, the House voted to approve the Volcker Rule Regulation Harmonization Act, an innocuous name for a not-so-innocuous bill. The bill would weaken the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from making speculative investments with regular people’s money (with exceptions), by exempting banks with less than $10 billion in assets. And, for reasons beyond imagination, 78 Democrats voted for it. In January, 11 Senate Democrats joined Republicans to cosponsor a bill to raise the threshold for extra regulatory scrutiny for banks from $50 billion to $250 billion, which would have left fewer than 10 banks in the US subject to such scrutiny. That bill included provisions similar to today’s bill, exempting banks with under $10 billion in assets from the Volcker Rule…Brenda Lawrence, MI-14.