Three months into his role as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Scott (R-S.C.) outlined some of his legislative priorities and discussed upcoming timelines today at the American Banking Association’s Washington Summit. Top of mind for Scott as he addressed bankers were affordable housing, stablecoin legislation, overdraft fees and reform of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Scott characterized housing as an issue where there could be bipartisan agreement, as well as an area where he and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), ranking member of the committee, can find “a lot of common ground.”
“On the housing issue, I think we have a chance to get a bipartisan piece of legislation to the president’s desk and signed into law,” Scott said, noting that Warren is “willing to work” with him. “The best way for us to have success on a housing markup is for us to stop thinking in Republican versus Democrat terms, [and] to start thinking about how the average American in this country still sees the dream as homeownership.” Scott said one idea with “bipartisan traction” is to create more incentives for local jurisdictions to increase their housing supply. “This is one of the areas where I really expect us to make serious progress in the Senate,” he said.
Scott said he is working closely with his counterparts in the House on stablecoin legislation in the form of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act of 2025, or the GENIUS Act. Introduced in the Senate in February, it cleared the Banking Committee in March with bipartisan support. The act establishes licensing and regulatory requirements for stablecoin issuers at the federal and state levels. It permits state oversight of stablecoin issuers with a market capitalization under $10 billion, while larger issuers would be regulated by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “This is going to be a bipartisan success that will happen before the summer,” Scott said. “It could happen before the end of May.”
At the end of March, the Senate passed Scott’s congressional review act resolution to overturn the CFPB’s overdraft cap. Scott told the assembled bankers that he would continue to work toward complete repeal. The House Financial Services Committee voted to approve a similar repeal, and the House is slated to vote soon. “When you have price fixing from the federal government, you are actually eliminating access to products for the people who really need it,” Scott said, adding that the repeal is just part of the CFPB reform he hopes to achieve in the coming months.
The Senate will do “everything we can” to shrink the size of the CFPB, Scott said, saying that among the changes, he hopes to limit CFBP’s funding and to institute a bipartisan board to oversee the bureau.
