As we previously addressed, the Senate Banking Committee reported out S. 2190, a bill that empowers the federal banking agencies to remove and ban you from banking practically at will.

After we learned that Chairman Sherrod Brown’s staff was attempting to attach S. 2190’s language to a House appropriations bill, we wrote to members of the House Appropriations Committee opposing the bill.

Instead of wasting time on granting more enforcement authority to the banking agencies, which already have more authority than they need, the Senate Banking Committee should focus on how the agencies use their discretionary authority under existing laws – sometime wisely, sometimes less so – and take appropriate action to mitigate supervisory enforcement abuses and due process violations.

In a separate alert, we summarized the recent Supreme Court decision in the Calcutt case, in which the Court overturned the FDIC order to remove and ban Calcutt from banking. The Calcutt case exemplifies the kind of regulatory abuses that the Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee should be addressing.