ARLINGTON, Va.–In advance of the House Committee on Appropriations’ mark-up of the FY 2016 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, members of the House Appropriations Committee were copied on a letter from NAFCU expressing its appreciation for the committee’s work on a draft bill that includes $233.5 million for the Community Development Financial Institutions fund and $2 million for NCUA’s Community Development Revolving Loan Fund.
NAFCU also said it supports the language in the draft report accompanying the bill that recognizes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should ensure that its rulemaking and compliance requirements are not duplicative of those of other regulators.
“Credit unions did not cause the financial crisis yet still find themselves suffering under an enormous amount of increased regulatory burden,” said NAFCU’s Brad Thaler in the letter. “NAFCU has urged Congress to explore every avenue possible to pursue meaningful regulatory relief so credit unions can focus on lending and job creation as opposed to onerous requirements handed down from regulators.”
NAFCU also repeated its support of language in the draft legislation that encourages permanency of the Credit Union Advisory Council at the CFPB, the suggestion that the CFPB should be run by a bipartisan commission, and a carefully balanced regulatory approach on any actions related to payday lending or overdraft protection.
“With respect to the draft report language relative to the impact of the Basel capital standards on community banks, NAFCU urges the committee to also be cognizant of NCUA’s recent risk-based capital proposal for credit unions,” Thaler wrote. “On January 15, 2015, the NCUA Board, in a 2-1 vote, issued a revised risk-based capital proposed rule for credit unions. The revised proposal still raises lot of concern in the credit union community as evidenced by the revised proposal receiving over 2,150 comments during the comment period. NCUA should provide Congress and other stakeholders additional cost-benefit analysis before the rule is made final to ensure healthy credit unions can continue to lend to consumers and promote job creation in our local communities. This fact was recognized in bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this week in the form of H.R. 2769, the Credit Union Risk-Based Capital Study Act of 2015.”