Daily Brew: A rollback of some Dodd-Frank regulations awaits Trump’s signature

May 25, 2018

Congress sends bill to rollback some Dodd-Frank financial regulations to Trump’s desk + Feinstein announces she opposes death penalty in final two weeks before California Senate primary   The Daily Brew will observe Memorial Day on Monday. We will see you again bright and early on Tuesday morning! Have a safe holiday weekend. Congress sends bill to rollback some Dodd-Frank financial regulations to Trump’s desk By a vote of 258-159, the House passed S 2155—the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. The bill proposed exempting some banks from the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama (D) on July 21, 2010. Thirty-three Democrats voted with 225 Republicans to pass the bill. Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) was the only Republican who voted with 158 Democrats against the bill. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 67-31 on March 14, 2018. President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law. The bill proposed raising from $50 billion to $250 billion the threshold at which banks face stress tests and other rules. It also proposed making community banks eligible for relief from mortgage-underwriting standards. The bill would not change the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s structure and oversight powers, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, or the Orderly Liquidation Authority’s ability to take over failing financial firms. Learn more         Feinstein announces she opposes death penalty in final two weeks before California Senate primary Incumbent U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced Wednesday that she no longer supports the death penalty. "It became crystal clear to me that the risk of unequal application is high and its effect on deterrence is low," she said in a statement. The campaign of Feinstein's chief Democratic rival, state Senate President Kevin de León, responded, "This latest flip on the death penalty is yet another appeal to California voters who have outgrown her centrist bent." Feinstein, who has been endorsed by former President Barack Obama (D) and won her 2012 re-election bid by 25 points, is expected to advance to the November ballot from the June 5 top-two primary. De León faces 30 other candidates for the second slot.   Learn more→ Find more news like this in our free weekly newsletter, The Heart of the Primaries. Click here to instantly subscribe. Vermont becomes first state to allow wholesale importation of prescription drugs Gov. Phil Scott (R) signed S 175. The legislation was unanimously approved in the Senate on March 1 and passed in the House by a 141-2 vote on May 2. The Senate unanimously concurred with House amendments on May 7. S 175 directs the state Agency of Human Services to design a program to import wholesale prescription drugs from Canada. Drugs included in the program would have to meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards and "generate substantial savings for Vermont consumers." The agency must submit a program proposal to the legislature by January 1, 2019, and a formal request to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by July 1, 2019. The bill limited the agency from implementing the program until the General Assembly enacted legislation establishing a charge per prescription. It is unclear whether the federal government would approve the plan. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he did not think the idea would work. Azar said Canada didn't have enough drugs to sell to the U.S. for less money and added that the FDA was concerned there would be no way to verify that drugs were from Canada and not "routed from a counterfeit factory in China." Bill co-sponsor Sen. Virginia Lyons (D) said, "We've found that drugs from Canada are very safe and the equivalent of FDA-approved, and we could keep our costs down by having our own wholesale importer and allow our people to buy at this reduced cost. It's about time that happened." Learn more→