While No One Was Looking, Congress Took A Huge Step Toward Fixing The Economy

Deregulation: Former FBI director James Comey‘s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was the fixation of Washington on Thursday. But the big story was on the House side of Congress, which passed a bill to repeal the ruinous Dodd-Frank banking law.

The Financial Choice Act, approved in the House by a 233-to-186 vote (no Democrats voted for the bill), has generated almost zero attention. But it has the potential to be the most economically beneficial legislation Congress will consider this year.

Put simply, Dodd-Frank has been a complete failure. Signed into law by President Obama almost seven years ago in the wake of the financial crisis, this massive law was supposed to, in his words, “be good for the economy … foster innovation … stop taxpayer bailouts once and for all.”

It has lived up to zero of those promises.

Dodd-Frank’s 22,000 pages of regulations, which cost $36 billion to comply with in the first six years, has choked competition in the banking industry, made banking more expensive, harmed economic growth and, to top it off, failed to make the banking system safer or end “too-big-to-fail.”

Since Dodd-Frank became law, for example, more than 1,700 banks have disappeared — more than one a day, on average. The banking industry got more concentrated.

Left in place, Dodd-Frank will cut the nation’s GDP by nearly $900 billion by 2025, according to the American Action Forum.

American Enterprise Institute Fellow Peter Wallison, who was a member of the official financial crisis investigation committee, argues that “without the repeal or substantial reform of Dodd-Frank, the U.S. economy will continue to grow only slowly into the future.”

And as for making the financial sector less risky — that too was a sham … (read more)

Source: IBD