WASHINGTON–Congress is back this week for an abbreviated schedule due to the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday and Pope Francis’ address to a joint session on Thursday.
There is a bigger issue looming over any legislation of concerns to credit unions, however, and that is the prospects of yet another government shutdown due to Congress being unable to reach any agreement. The federal government’s fiscal year ends in approximately 90 days.
In the meantime, CUNA’s Chief Advocacy Officer, Ryan Donovan, said it is paying attention to HR 348, the Responsibly And Professionally Invigorating Development Act (RAPID) Act of 2015, which is aimed at establishing procedures to streamline the regulatory review process at federal agencies. A Senate subcommittee this week will also be holding a hearing on agencies and regulatory guidance.
Donovan said CUNA does expect the House Financial Services Committee will also be holding a mark-up so that later this week it gets a list of bills to be considered. “It’s not out of the question that our NCUA budget bill or either of our FHLB bills will be on that list, so we’ll be keeping an eye on that,” he said.
Separately, Donovan praised the NCUA board for indicating it will move forward with a plan to ease credit union field of membership expansions, including eliminating the requirement for board approval; those FOM expansion requests would be handled by the agency’s Office of Consumer Protection.
“That should shorten the expansion process by two months,” said Donovan. “We have been urging NCUA to remove all requirements not required by law from this process. So that is a good first step on the FOM expansion effort.”