(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Senate work kicks in on banks, budget, and war authorizations [1]
['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-03-16
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a member of the Finance Committee, so you can definitely expect that the underlying regulatory environment is on the agenda for the hearing. Warren, along with Rep. Katie Porter, have introduced legislation to restore the regulations under the Dodd-Frank bill on midsize banks. Congress and the Trump administration eased those regulations in 2018, raising the threshold for “too big to fail banks” from those holding $50 billion in assets to $250 billion.
“In 2018, I rang the alarm bell about what would happen if Congress rolled back critical Dodd-Frank protections: Banks would load up on risk to boost their profits and collapse, threatening our entire economy—and that is precisely what happened,” Warren said in introducing the bill. “President Biden called on Congress to strengthen the rules for banks, and I’m proposing legislation to do just that by repealing the core of Trump’s bank law.”
Beyond that hearing, the Senate will be taking the first procedural vote on repealing the Gulf and Iraq war authorizations that really should not still be in effect. One thing they might think about going forward is creating automatic sunsets on authorizations to use military force (AUMFs) so that one can’t stay lurking in the background for 30 years (the Gulf war AUMF was passed in 1991) and be used to justify unrelated war-making or national security actions (which has definitely happened).
There will be amendments when it comes to the floor next week, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has confirmed. Sen. Tim Kaine, lead sponsor of the bill, isn’t hoping that any of the amendments will end up killing the bill. “There’s no no wiggle room. There’s no vague language and people wonder what it’s about,” he said about the two-paged bill. “That also narrows down the scope of germane amendments to more findings and editorializing you put in the more you make amendments germane.”
Sen. Rand Paul is always the usual suspect for demanding amendments on anything that hits the floor that isn’t a nomination, and he’s going to do it this time, too. But in this case, he doesn’t want to derail the efforts—he’s backed repealing these AUMFs for years. He is, however, considering adding another one: the 2001 AUMF that was passed just three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attack. The one that was so broadly written it has been used to justify military action more than three dozen times in 14 different countries “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States” as the AUMF allowed.
Paul told Politico that he hasn’t decided yet on pushing that. For his part, Kaine said he thinks the 2001 AUMF needs to be “dramatically revised” rather than repealed, but wants to take it up separately. “You’d get a lot fewer votes for that than you would for the Iraq repeal,” he said.
The White House has released a statement saying Biden will sign the bill if it passes in the House.
x Biden will sign the AUMF repeal pic.twitter.com/9vPvLwMwP5 — Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) March 16, 2023
The House, by the way, is not in until Wednesday of next week, when it will return for about half a dozen days of legislation before taking off for another two weeks.
RELATED STORIES:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/16/2158583/-Senate-work-kicks-in-on-banks-budget-and-war-authorizations
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
