WASHINGTON — House Republicans targeted the international Basel Committee and their role in developing increased capital requirements for U.S. banks, a new front in GOP criticism of the Biden administration's financial regulators and their capital rules.
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy, said that he, as well as the full panel's chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., have sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting information on federal banking agencies' role in the development of international standards for Basel III endgame.
The report, Barr said, will help in "exposing international governance groups' activist pursuits across the global economic system and the control over U.S. regulatory frameworks by unelected bureaucrats.
"Staff from the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC and Treasury work with those bodies to develop regulatory standards, write policy papers and promote the goals of those global governance bodies," he said. "Some federal banking officials sometimes even receive compensation from global governance bodies for their work in those bodies. U.S. federal banking agencies are held to abide by commitments that those bodies require of members in their self-constructed and sometimes dynamically changing mandates."
Republicans and bank groups are pushing back hard against the financial regulators' Basel III endgame proposal, which could raise capital requirements by 16 percent for some banks. Particularly, bank groups and Republican lawmakers have targeted Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr.
The Basel III endgame proposal is part of a broader international accord that arose from the 2008 financial crisis and is designed to codify international standards for bank capital and liquidity so as to prevent regulatory arbitrage. Republicans have, in the past, said that the U.S. banking regulators superseded those minimum standards and have instead "gold-plated" them to make them even more stringent.
Rep. Barr also criticized international regulators' influence on climate policy.
"Along with the Basel Committee and BIS, the Financial Stability Board, or FSB, and, recently, the Network for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS, have more influence on and information about goals, intentions and plans of U.S. regulatory agencies than does Congress," he said. "The tangled web of global governance bodies works behind closed doors in tight cohesion with U.S. regulatory officials and staff at the federal banking agencies."
The GOP line of attack has garnered little bipartisan support. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, took time instead to decry the Republican-supported funding bill that would cut resources to financial regulatory agencies.
"We are 10 days away from a costly government shutdown, and instead of working with Democrats to prevent that, Republicans are advancing funding bills that are dead on arrival because they slash critical funding and undermine agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," Waters said. "And despite the bank failures earlier this year, Republicans have the audacity to hold this hearing to attack regulators for coordinating with their foreign counterparts to better promote bank safety and soundness. "
