WASHINGTON—Congress Wednesday passed a short-term spending bill to keep the federal government running through Dec. 9, avoiding a shutdown at midnight EDT Friday.
While averting a federal government shutdown, the stopgap legislation does not include any of the regulatory relief provisions the trade association lobbied for and achieved in the House-passed Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act for FY 2017.
CUNA stated that it continues to lobby Congress to include the desired regulatory relief provisions in the final “omnibus,” or similar legislation that will need to be passed by Congress after the November elections to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2017.
According to CUNA, the original House bill, which passed in July, includes significant relief for banks and credit unions, including:
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Changing the leadership structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to a five-person board and placing the bureau under the appropriations process;
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Requiring the CFPB to study the use of arbitration prior to issuing any new regulations. This would affect the Bureau’s recent proposal on arbitration;
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Allowing for residential mortgages held in portfolio by lenders to be recognized as qualified mortgages for the purposes of the CFPB's mortgage lending rules;
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Supporting efforts to clarify the definition of ‘‘points and fees’’ for qualified mortgages in order to improve access to credit for low and moderate income borrowers; and
- Stopping the CFPB from proceeding with its short-term, small-dollar loan proposal.