Main Street Act

Regulators could no longer weigh whether a merger creates a monopoly or cuts competition, as long as the combined bank holds under $10 billion. The one exception is a deal that would leave only one bank with a branch in a metro area.

A hard 120-day clock would start when a bank files a merger or acquisition application. If the agency has not granted or denied it by then, the application counts as granted.

Banks trade large deposits through networks so that each customer's money stays fully insured. The bill would nearly triple how much a bank may hold this way before it counts as brokered money.

Only banks with the top two supervisory grades can use these swaps today. The bill would extend them to banks with the middle grade, and to new banks regulators have not examined yet.

The Federal Reserve lets smaller bank parent companies carry more debt and skip some capital rules. Within 180 days of enactment, the Fed would have to raise that cutoff to $6 billion in assets.

Dozens of dollar cutoffs decide which banks face tougher rules, from stress tests to mortgage data reporting. They would climb with growth or inflation, could only rise and never fall, and get rounded up. The first round lands within a year for the largest-bank rules and by April 2031 for the rest.

Financial holding companies may buy stakes in non-financial businesses but must sell them within a window regulators set. The bill would bar regulators from setting that window shorter than 15 years, counted from when the stake was first bought.

The FDIC must normally pick the cheapest way to resolve a failed bank, which has often favored the biggest buyers. It could instead pick a costlier option, within a cap it writes by rule, if that keeps the failed bank out of a globally systemic bank's hands. Each use goes to Congress within 30 days.

Four federal regulators would each publish a yearly report on bank, savings and credit union license applications. It would show how many they received, the average and median time to approve, and common reasons for denial.

Regulators can waive the national deposit cap to let a large bank buy a failing one. They would first need clear and convincing evidence it was necessary, then justify it to Congress within 30 days and post that justification online.

The Federal Reserve would have to review how well its standing loan facility for banks works, write a plan to fix what it finds, and report to Congress within a year. Its inspector general would report on progress each year after.

Nine agencies, including the consumer bureau, HUD and the SEC, would have to print a notice on every new guidance document. It would say the guidance is not law and that not following it does not by itself prove a violation.

Banks could ask a regulator for a written answer before acting, and get one within 60 days. That answer would bind the agency for that bank, but would be exempt from open-records requests. Agencies could publish anonymized summaries instead.

Well-run banks and credit unions under $6 billion would get a narrower exam every second time around. They could also ask to have their safety, consumer-protection and cybersecurity exams done in a single visit.

When deciding whether a bank's merger application file is complete, regulators could count only what the bank itself submitted. Reports, views or recommendations from anyone else could not be used to call the file incomplete.

Eased capital rules for newly formed community banks were set to run as a trial. They would become permanent on their own unless regulators jointly find, between January and June 2031, that the trial hurt bank safety.

Each banking agency would study whether dropping “reputational risk” from supervision is safe. If it is, the agency could no longer use bad publicity about a bank's customers in rules, exams, ratings or enforcement. Ties to terrorist groups or state sponsors of terrorism stay covered.

Banks, credit unions and the people who work for them answer enforcement charges before the agency's own judges today. They would get 20 days to move the case to a federal district court instead, under normal court rules of evidence.

A single line at the end of the bill trims a Federal Reserve account and sends the money to the Treasury. It is a budget offset, and it would not take effect for ten years.