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July 23, 2014

Frank defends Dodd-Frank 4 years in

July 24, 2014 – Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., on Wednesday returned to the committee to defend the law he helped create – the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act – on the week of its fourth anniversary.

At a hearing titled, "Assessing the Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act Four Years Later," Frank criticized Republicans for opposing the law's regulations and said that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission "receive vast amounts of comments for each proposed rule, while the Republican House Appropriations Committee starved them of funding."

Frank agreed with Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. and other panelists that the criteria for what determines a "systemically important financial institution" under the law should not be based on the $50 billion in assets threshold, but on the institution's complexity and interconnectedness with other institutions.

Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., noted the difficulty for smaller institutions of complying with the increasing number of regulations generated by Dodd-Frank and mentioned community banks and credit unions in particular.

Other witnesses included representatives from First State Bank, Treasury Strategies Inc., the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users and the American Enterprise Institute.

Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., put out a report Monday alleging that the Dodd-Frank Act has entrenched "too big to fail" as government policy, rather than ending it.

NAFCU was the only financial trade association to oppose putting credit unions of any size under the authority of CFPB when the bureau was proposed, and continues to push Congress for regulatory relief for the industry.