U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, is the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, an influential panel that oversees the nation’s banking and securities sectors. Hill outlined his priorities for change in the 119th Congress in a recent Talk Business & Politics interview.
When he campaigned for the House committee chairmanship, Hill rolled out a package of ideas titled “Make Community Banking Great Again” to explain how he would guide the panel and push for new legislation. A former U.S. Treasury official in the George H.W. Bush administration, Arkansas’ 2nd District Congressman said he wants to see regulations better tied to bank size.
“I believe strongly in tailoring regulations. So the more large and complex your business strategy, the more regulatory surveillance and scrutiny that you ought to have. The smaller and more straightforward your business, you ought to have a lighter touch of regulation. You still comply with the regulations, but you have it in a less costly way to the institution,” he said.
“I have an effort to do that for community banks. One way to do that would be to raise the definition of a community banking company up beyond $10 billion to a much larger number. I think that would really help the same with regional banks, maybe raise that number to $100 billion or so that derive the regulatory guidance that drives some of the regulatory burden for the institutions. So tailoring regulations is really a top goal I have,” added Hill.
Hill said legislation is already being developed to address these changes and more.
“We’ve got bills that do this. They amend the banking acts to give that flexibility to the regulators to provide that relief to smaller banks. I have an a bill called the Fair Exam Act that creates an ombudsman for community banks that have had an exam finding that wasn’t accurate. They want to have a second opinion on working with their federal regulator. That’s another thing we’ve heard consistently from banks across the country,” he said.
Another area for legislative change that will likely involve discussions and coordination with the new Trump Administration centers around cryptocurrency. Hill said he believes the new Congress will make some significant changes in this space.
“So two things are different from the last Congress. In the last Congress, the House Financial Services Committee voted on a dollar-backed stable coin. This would be a tokenized payment in dollars, a digital payment that could be used in a blockchain application internationally to regulate those under U.S. law.
“The second thing we did was we had a bill that was the regulatory structure for crypto. How do you raise money for crypto? How are you regulated in digital assets? What’s a commodity? What’s a security? Both of those bills passed the committee and our regulatory framework. The bill passed the whole House with strong Democratic support,” he said. “What’s different for this Congress is the administration. The Trump administration supports an innovation agenda for financial technology, including digital assets. And over in the Senate, Tim Scott, the incoming banking committee chair, John Boozman from Arkansas, the incoming agriculture committee chair also support that agenda.
“So in this Congress, we have, I think the ability to get those two things done. A stable coins bill under U.S. law that I think extends the value of the dollar around the world and a regulatory market structure for crypto,” said Hill.
Hill’s interview was taped before Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as well as before Trump’s press conference blaming DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] for the deadly air crash at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
Hill commented on an earlier in the week controversy where Trump’s executive orders caused confusion in some states over federal payments, such as SNAP, Medicaid and other streams. He said the executive orders were “confusing” and not well-planned, but he said the administration should have limited review of that Congressional spending.
“It struck me a little bit of ‘ready, fire, aim’ that the idea that the executive branch would review very carefully, all spending that’s forthcoming through grant programs. I think it’s a good idea. I mean Article One, the legislature approves money through the appropriation process, but we challenge the executive branch Article Two to faithfully implement those laws,” said Hill.
“They have a right to review and see if they think that the executive branch is doing a good job on that. Secondly, we’ve got a $2 trillion deficit. And so if they want to be more discreet in how they spend money for the taxpayers, I think that’s smart too. But I think this was an example of getting out ahead of themselves. They hadn’t communicated this very well. Even in one news cycle, they changed their minds a couple of times on it,” he said.
This story was originally published on our content partner's website, Talk Business & Politics.