Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said he and Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are in agreement that the SAFE Banking Act “should go through regular order,” rather than rushing it to the floor and risking opposition on procedural grounds in comments at the American Bankers Association Washington Summit today. While Scott pointedly did not express support for the bill—which has been passed by the House several times in previous Congresses—he acknowledged that many of his Republican colleagues are eager to bring the bill to the floor, and that “I think we’ll come to a conclusion, likely in this Congress.”
Scott also decried the CFPB’s recent campaign against so-called “junk fees”—rhetoric that was echoed by President Biden during his state of the union speech earlier this year. “When you bring in more rules, or have a conversation about ‘junk fees’ that reduces the fee structure somewhere, it typically leads to an interest rate increase somewhere else or a new fee structure somewhere else. Those typically disadvantage the folks who are coming into a system,” Scott said.
He added that he’s “excited” about a pending Supreme Court ruling in case challenging the structure of the bureau, and that “the more Supreme Court rulings that rein in bureaucracy, the better off the American public will be.”
