Rep. Andy Barr: Banking Regulators Deviated From Core Mission

Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., said Tuesday (April 29) that he supports bills that will tailor federal bank regulation to financial institutions’ risk profiles and maintain Congress’ authority over the federal banking regulatory agencies.

Barr, who is chair of the Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the House Financial Service Committee, said this in opening remarks prepared for delivery at a hearing looking at ways to increase accountability in bank supervision and enhance interagency coordination.

“I’ve heard from community bankers across the country about the inconsistency and lack of clarity in the supervision and examination framework being driven by partisan bureaucrats in Washington,” Barr said in his remarks. “Rather than our Prudential regulators working alongside supervised institutions to ensure compliance, we have seen a shift to promoting agendas such as climate-related finance or the debanking of legally operating businesses — dangerous deviations from the core mission and purpose of these agencies.”

Barr said Dodd-Frank imposed a “one-size-fits-all” approach on community banks 15 years ago, imposing unnecessary compliance costs on them even though they did not contribute to the financial crisis.

The bipartisan Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act (S. 2155) passed in 2018 aimed to recalibrate federal bank regulations to take a more risk-based approach and remove excessive compliance burdens from small financial institutions, Barr said.

However, that approach was abandoned under the Biden administration when regulatory officials pushed for the Basel III Endgame campaign and an agreement with the global governance group Network for the Greening of the Financial System (NGFS), Barr said.

Barr added that pushback from legislators of both parties put an end to those efforts.

In his opening remarks for the hearing, Barr said: “I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about Congress’ role in supporting an objective, risk-based regulatory and supervisory framework that works for all Americans, the importance of regulatory tailoring, and the need to protect the U.S. financial system from overreach by global governance groups.”

The Tuesday hearing, “Regulatory Overreach: The Price Tag on American Prosperity,” included over dozen pieces of legislation. Among them were the Protecting Privacy in Purchases Act (H.R. 1181), the Financial Integrity and Regulation Management Act (H.R. 2702) and the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 2808).

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