Tag Archives: U.S. Senate

The vote passed along party lines with a 50-48 vote, clearing the way for Chopra to serve as Director of the Bureau.

The nomination for Kathleen Kraninger to become the next Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection passed a key Senate hurdle. Here’s what comes next.

After hours of discussion on the Senate floor, early Saturday morning the United States Senate secured the 50 votes needed to pass its tax bill. The vote was a close 51-49.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs met Tuesday morning in an open session titled “Consumer Data Security and the Credit Bureaus” to address how credit bureaus intend on protecting consumer data—specifically in light of the recent ...

Congressman Tom Reed (R-New York) introduced the Mortgage Forgiveness Tax Relief Act of 2015 (H.R. 1002) on February 13, and that bill is now being heard in the House Committee on Ways and Means. Two weeks later, Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and Dean Heller (R-Nevada) introduced a similar bill (S. 608), which is currently in the Senate Banking Committee. Both bills would extend relief to homeowners on forgiven mortgage debt – the remaining mortgage balance when a borrower sells a home in a short sale to avoid foreclosure

U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has reintroduced bipartisan legislation that calls for more transparency from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, according to an announcement on Paul's website. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015, or S. 264, commonly known as Audit the Fed, calls for elimination of the restrictions placed on the Government Accountability Office (GAO)'s audits of the Fed. The bill also mandates that several divisions of the Fed be subject to Congressional oversight, including credit facilities, securities purchases, and quantitative easing activities.

Twenty-seven senators have signed a letter addressed to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Mel Watt asking him to reconsider the stricter membership requirements for the Federal Home Loan Banks the Agency proposed in September. The changes to membership requirements outlined by Watt in a speech at the FHLBank Director's Conference on September 2 require members to hold 1 percent of their assets in home mortgage loans (HML) on an ongoing basis, whereas the previous rule requires members to demonstrate this only at the time of their application and not at any time afterward

The U.S. Senate passed a bill on Tuesday night that retroactively extends 55 tax provisions, among which are allowing deductions for mortgage insurance premium interest and tax relief on forgiven mortgage debt. The tax provisions covered by the bill, known as the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014, expired on December 31, 2013. The bill provides for a retroactive one-year extension which expires on December 30 of this year and would be effective for those filing 2014 returns next year.

The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have both unanimously voted to pass a bill that give military servicemembers who have recently returned from duty added protection from foreclosure, according to an announcement from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who introduced the bill in May.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a cost estimate on Friday for S. 1217, a senate bill proposed June 2013 by Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) that would eliminate GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a private insurance company system with a government backstop. According to the newly-released estimate, removing the two GSEs would save the government billions of dollars in the next 10 years.