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July 18, 2014 at 10:10 AM
The House spending bill that passed Wednesday and included an amendment that would bar the Securities and Exchange Commission from using federal money to write a rule to put brokers under a fiduciary mandate is likely dead on arrival in the Senate—and would likely be vetoed by the Obama Administration.
It’s “unlikely that the Senate will agree” to the amendment by Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., which passed on a voice vote on the House floor. An even if the Senate did pass it, that “might provoke a presidential veto,” David Tittsworth, CEO of the Investment Adviser Association, told ThinkAdvisor.
Tittsworth chalked the amendment up to “another attempt by the brokerage and insurance industries to do whatever they can to make sure that investors are not protected by the Investment Advisers Act fiduciary standard.”
Lankford argued that “This (proposed standard) will provide a disincentive to provide retirement vehicles for Americans on the lower and middle end of the income scale.”
Indeed, Tittsworth said that IAA would “continue to work with state securities regulators, investor advocates and other industry groups who support the fiduciary standard to ensure that the Senate will reject this ill-advised language when it takes up the SEC appropriations bill.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet scheduled a vote on its spending bill, and Congress is set to adjourn soon for a monthlong August break.
