InfoBytes Blog
House passes appropriations bill that includes several financial services provisions, brings CFPB into the appropriations process
On July 19, the House passed H.R. 6147, the “Interior, Environment, Financial Services, and General Government Appropriations Act, 2019” by a vote of 217 to 199. Under the appropriations bill, the CFPB would be brought into the appropriations process, and a change to Dodd-Frank would strike the “for-cause” provision on the president’s authority to remove the director, which has been the subject of significant litigation. (See here for continuing InfoBytes coverage on legal challenges to the CFPB’s constitutionality.) Several other financial services provisions would, among other things, (i) amend the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Act of 1978 to create an independent examination review director to evaluate bank examination procedures to ensure consistency; (ii) authorize the Federal Reserve to make Volcker Rule exemption determinations and issue and amend rules under Section 13 of the Banking Holding Company Act; (iii) allow the appropriate federal banking agencies to make process improvements for living will submissions; (iv) amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to allow the furnishing of positive credit reporting related to a consumer’s performance when making payments under a lease agreement with respect to a dwelling or pursuant to a contract for utility or telecommunications services; and (v) require the Comptroller General of the United States to submit a report on the impact of furnishing consumer information, pursuant to the amendments of the FCRA, to Congress no later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act. As previously covered in InfoBytes, a similar measure concerning the furnishing of consumer data was also introduced as part of S. 488, which passed the House on July 17 as part of a larger package of securities and banking bills. H.R. 6147 now heads to the Senate.