Key Development: House Republicans will use the upcoming appropriations process to propose changes to financial regulations, Rep. Steve Stivers (Ohio), a member of the whip team, says.

Substance: Relief for community banks, changes to the CFPB and tweaks to the FSOC will be among the measures, Stivers says.

June 11 (BNA) -- House Republicans will push changes to financial regulations in the upcoming appropriations process, through substantive policy amendments to the financial services appropriations bill, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) said.

The proposals will likely include relief for community banks, changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and tweaks to how the Financial Stability Oversight Council designates “systemically important financial institutions,” Stivers, a member of the House Republican whip team, said at a June 10 legislative seminar sponsored by Baker Hostetler LLP in Washington.

Prevailing ‘Model.'

“It looks like most of the things that are going to happen will actually happen through the appropriations bills,” Stivers said.

“I think the model that happened last year is probably the model that we're going to have for a little while,” he added, citing the swaps push-out rule rollback in a large spending bill enacted at the end of 2014.

If a proposal isn't “wildly bipartisan,” it is likely to come up in appropriations, he said. “I wish that wasn't the case, but I think that's the way it is.”

Bill

A draft of the financial services appropriations bill was released by the House Appropriations Committee June 10 and approved by the Financial Services subcommittee a day later. It would set the SEC's funding for fiscal year 2016 at $1.5 billion, the same as enacted for 2015. It also has several substantive provisions limiting the SEC's authority.

Stivers told reporters June 10 that “there could be” some additional substantive policy riders to the appropriations bill affecting the SEC.

Munis

“I worry about some of the things the SEC has done lately” on municipal disclosure safe harbors, Stivers told Bloomberg BNA.

He said he was wary of agency overreach in its Municipalities Continuing Cooperation Disclosure program, in which the agency recommends looser settlement terms for municipal issuers and underwriters who self-report disclosure violations.

Some of the settlement terms have still been too punitive, Stivers said, amounting to a “big cash grab” by the agency that could result in some good-faith issuers to forfeit their membership in the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

In 2014, he proposed but withdrew an amendment to that year's appropriations bill that would have limited the SCDC. Stivers told Bloomberg BNA that he is “continuing to push” the agency on the issue and could offer the amendment again.