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Trump Planning Dodd-Frank Overhaul

wall-stCalling the Dodd-Frank Act a “negative force,” presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Wednesday [1] that in the next couple of weeks he will unveil a plan to overhaul the controversial Wall Street reform law that was passed in 2010 in response to the crisis.

While he did not disclose specific changes he would make, Trump told Reuters [1] that his plan will be a “near dismantling” of Dodd-Frank.

“Dodd-Frank has made it impossible for bankers to function,” Trump said in the Reuters interview. “It makes it very hard for bankers to loan money for people to create jobs, for people with businesses to create jobs. And that has to stop.”

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, was swift to respond to Trump’s stated intention to overhaul Dodd-Frank. Wednesday morning, Clinton tweeted, “Latest reckless idea from Trump: gut rules on Wall Street, and leave middle-class families out to dry.”

2-1 Donald Trump

Donald Trump

Republicans have been trying to roll back Dodd-Frank ever since it was passed in July 2010. Lately several bills aimed at chipping away at the law have gained traction in Congress. In mid-April, two such bills [2] passed in the House Financial Services Committee; one to repeal Dodd-Frank’s bailout fund for large, complex financial institutions and one to put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s spending on a budget in an attempt to make the Bureau more accountable to taxpayers.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, recently told DS News that “America needs a new vision—a new model for financial reform—because the Dodd-Frank Act is a failure.”

Democrats have generally been fiercely protective of Dodd-Frank and highly critical of Republican efforts to undermine it. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, said of those two bills that passed in the Committee in mid-April, “Both of these bills, if enacted, would take our financial system back to September of 2008, when regulators did not have the tools to protect consumers or the broader economy from financial sector ruin. It would take us back to a time when we were hemorrhaging nearly 800,000 jobs a month, household wealth dropped by $13 trillion, and millions of our fellow Americans were facing foreclosure, eviction, and potential homelessness.”