Today, the House Financial Services Committee passed two pieces of legislation authored by U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer.

The bills that were passed out of committee were H.R. 2706, the Financial Institution Customer Protection Act and H.R. 3312, the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act.  

“Over the past few years, the House Financial Services Committee has expressed bipartisan support regarding both pieces of legislation that were passed today,” Luetkemeyer said. “The purpose of the legislation is simple - it aims to provide greater transparency and accountability by the government.”

H.R. 2706 dictates that agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, among others, can not request or order a financial institution to terminate a banking relationship unless the regulator has valid reason, effectively ending the Obama Administration’s Operation Choke Point.

H.R. 3312 replaces the inflexible $50 billion threshold for designation of a bank holding company as a Systemically Important Financial Institution (SIFI) with a series of well-established standards that more accurately measure systemic risk. In addition, this legislation requires that the Federal Reserve review an institution’s size, interconnectedness, substitutability, global cross-jurisdictional activity, and complexity before determining whether that institution should be subject to the full SIFI regulatory regime.

In addition, there were several provisions of Luetkemeyer’s H.R. 2133, CLEARR Act that were passed in the committee today.

Luetkemeyer is Chairman of the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee on the House Financial Services Committee.