In the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s demise, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed fingers at several culprits, including the company’s diversity initiatives and federal regulators who he said “always seem to whiff” at preventing a financial crisis.
But left out of DeSantis’ comments was his own record on banking regulations. As a member of Congress, DeSantis was an outspoken champion for lifting regulation on small and mid-sized financial institutions, and in 2018 he voted for a bill that eventually became law loosening oversight of mid-size banks like Silicon Valley Bank.
The 2018 legislation, which then-President Donald Trump signed into law, is under renewed scrutiny amid the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the lender to startups whose recent collapse has rocked the venture capital world and sent chills through the country’s financial system. The law, which passed with bipartisan support, rolled back regulations known as the Dodd-Frank Act passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, including some for smaller and medium-sized institutions.
Among the 75-page law’s many provisions was a measure backed by regional banks that raised the asset threshold for tougher supervision by federal banking regulators from $50 billion to $250 billion. That would have affected Silicon Valley Bank, which had $209 billion in total assets at the end of 2022, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
DeSantis had little to say publicly about the 2018 law, one of his last major votes as a member of the US House of Representatives before he resigned to run for governor – but the year before, he repeatedly boasted about Republican votes to repeal Dodd-Frank in interviews on Fox Business Network.
During one such appearance in June 2017, DeSantis forcefully argued for easing restrictions on…
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