WASHINGTON–The nation’s community bankers are in Washington this week to lobby Congress and administration officials, and the credit union tax exemption and field of membership is in their sights.
TheIndependent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) is hosting its 2018 Capital Summit, and while attacks on CUs are part of the agenda, the banks are also pushing issues on which they share the same positions as credit unions, including regulatory relief, modernizing the Bank Secrecy Act, passing a new farm bill, and reforming the housing-finance system.
In addition to meeting with lawmakers, the community bankers will also be hearing this week from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting, Senate Banking Committee Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chairman Patrick Toomey (R-PA), pollster and political analyst Kristen Soltis Anderson (who also addressed CUNA’s GAC), and Conference of State Bank Supervisors President and CEO John Ryan.
“Community banks support localized economic growth one loan at a time, but excessive and unnecessary regulation is stifling their ability to meet the needs of local communities,” said ICBA Chairman Timothy K. Zimmerman, CEO of Standard Bank in Monroeville, Penn. in a statement. “With at least one community bank in every congressional district, community bankers are in the nation’s capital to urge their representatives to enact policies to promote stronger economic growth, jobs and prosperity in communities nationwide. We are in Washington to demand enactment of much-needed regulatory relief.”
The ICBA said its priorities this week are:
- Immediate passage of regulatory relief legislation inspired by ICBA’s Plan for Prosperity platform given the strong momentum from the bipartisan Senate passage of S 2155
- Modernizing the Bank Secrecy Act to more effectively target money laundering and terrorist financing while reducing community bank burden and expense
- “Ending the unjustified credit union tax subsidies and the National Credit Union Administration’s unreasonable actions to expand credit union activities beyond their statutory limits”
- Passing a new farm bill that supports commodity prices, enhances USDA guaranteed-loan programs, preserves crop insurance funding, and returns the Farm Credit System to its primary mission of serving bona-fide farmers and ranchers
- Advancing housing-finance reform that builds on what is working today and preserves secondary market access for community bank mortgage lenders.