The House next week will consider legislation that would prohibit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from implementing large parts of its third-party debt collection rule—a regulation that the Trump Administration wrote and the Biden Administration already has delayed.
Despite efforts by financial industry and consumer groups to reverse the policy, the third round of Economic Impact Payments to individuals may be seized by states and creditors, a Biden Administration official has told senators.
“After a payment in the third round of EIPs is deposited into an individual’s bank account, federal law does not protect that amount from state offsets or from garnishment by creditors,” Aruna Kalyanam, the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for tax and budget in the Office of Legislative Affairs, wrote in a letter to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).
Congressional postal banking proponents think they can get a pilot program appropriation passed and sent to President Biden.
House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is asking for a supplemental appropriation for the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network so that it can implement the anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act changes Congress passed last year.
Citing the pandemic, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing to delay by 60 days the effective dates of debt collection rules that were issued by the Trump Administration last year. The agency is seeking public comment on the proposal, but the proposal first must be published in the Federal Register.
The Biden Administration released a bare-bones funding blueprint for next year and it proposes a 22.2% increase for the Community Development Financial Institutions program, the opposite of Trump Administration budgets which always called for elimination of the program.
According to the Government Accountability Office, the Small Business Administration has not conducted a comprehensive assessment of the risks of the Paycheck Protection Program because of the need for a rapid execution of the program. The GAO does not consider this an acceptable excuse and noted that an independent auditor reported multiple problems with the loan program.
The Biden Administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is back to a regulatory regime, rescinding a series of pandemic-related policy rollbacks. The pandemic will no longer be an acceptable excuse for failing to follow the CFPB’s consumer protection rules. Agency officials were quite clear about what will be expected of financial institutions going forward.
President Biden on Tuesday signed legislation that will extend the deadline for businesses to apply for Paycheck Protection Program loans from March 31 to May 31.
The legislation, H.R. 1799, also allows the Small Business Administration to continue to process loans until June 30. This will allow loans that are in the pipeline on May 31 to be processed.
Brad Thaler, the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions’ Vice President of Legislative Affairs, wrote to members of congressional tax-writing committees to warn them that the Independent Community Banker’s Association wants credit unions taxed to eliminate a source of competition for banks.