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A newly filed large-scale spending bill to keep the government funded for the 2022 Fiscal Year does not include language to protect banks that works with state-legal marijuana dispensaries\u2014and the sponsor of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act would like to know why.<\/p>\n
In a lighthearted exchange in the House Rules Committee early Wednesday morning when the panel was discussing the omnibus spending package, Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) said with a smile, \u201cI appreciate this bill. I hope the next one has SAFE Banking in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean it isn\u2019t in it?\u201d Chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) jokingly asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s not,\u201d Perlmutter replied.<\/p>\n
House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) chimed in so say,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know how we missed it, Ed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s far from the first time that Perlmutter has made a point to talk about enacting cannabis reform legislation during committee hearings on ostensibly unrelated or wider-ranging legislation.<\/p>\n
At a hearing on a postal service reform bill before the panel last month, he said worker shortages could be partly resolved by ending federal cannabis prohibition<\/a>, telling his colleagues to \u201ckind of keep that in the back of the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Also last month in a separate Rules Committee hearing, the congressman stressed that he\u2019s planning to offer the SAFE Banking Act as an amendment<\/a> to \u201cevery single bill I possibly can until it\u2019s passed,\u201d and he acknowledged that his colleagues are probably \u201cbecoming all too familiar with\u201d the legislation in light of his repeated advocacy for it.<\/p>\n While the congressman has focused on other vehicles to attach his cannabis banking legislation, that wasn\u2019t the case for this latest omnibus bill, which is expected to receive a House floor vote on Wednesday. Getting bicameral and bipartisan buy-in to achieve this reform through the massive spending bill would have likely proved challenging.<\/p>\n However, a spokesperson for Perlmutter told Marijuana Moment on Wednesday reiterated that the congressman has been in \u201cconstant communication\u201d with relevant committee chairs and legislative leaders to find a path forward for his legislation and will \u201ccontinue to look for every opportunity\u201d to advance the reform.<\/p>\n Perlmutter has made clear that he\u2019s not going to sit around and wait for the Senate to take up his standalone bill, even if that\u2019d be an ideal pathway for the reform.<\/p>\n He got the language attached to House-passed COVID relief packages twice<\/a>, though they didn\u2019t make it into the final legislation.<\/p>\n He inserted the bill language into the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)\u2014but it was again excluded following bicameral negotiations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most recently, the SAFE Banking Act was placed<\/a> in a large-scale bill focused on manufacturing and innovation called the America COMPETES Act.<\/p>\n In other words, it would have been par for the course for the congressman to try using this omnibus bill as another potential vehicle for his banking language.<\/p>\n But the exchange in the Rules committee shows that Perlmutter is living up to his commitment to \u201ccontinue to be a real pest, and persistent in getting this done\u201d<\/a> before he retires from Congress at the end of the session, as he said during an event hosted by the American Bankers Association (ABA) on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Following the bipartisan House passage of the banking bill, Perlmutter said he naively expected it \u201cto sail through the Senate, which is always a bad assumption, because nothing sails through the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 But he\u2019s taken pains to build support, including from current Senate leadership that has insisted on enacting comprehensive legalization with firm equity provisions in place before advancing a bill viewed as friendly to the industry.<\/p>\n Despite recently\u00a0saying that he\u2019s \u201cconfident\u201d that the Senate will take up his bill<\/a>\u00a0this session, the congressman recognized that while he\u2019s supportive of revisions related to criminal justice reform, taxation, research and other issues, he knows that \u201cas we expand this thing, then we start losing votes, particularly Republican votes and we got enough votes in the Senate to do it\u201d as is.<\/p>\n Perlmutter also brought up the fact that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has\u00a0addressed the federal-state marijuana banking conflict<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cshe wants to get this off her plate and get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of the ABA\u00a0event, the financial group released a poll that it commissioned showing that a strong majority of Americans\u00a0support freeing up banks to work with marijuana businesses<\/a>\u00a0without facing federal penalties.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the number of banks that report working with marijuana businesses\u00a0ticked up again near the end of 2021<\/a>, according to recently released federal data.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear if the increase is related to congressional moves to pass a bipartisan cannabis banking reform bill, but the figures from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) signal that financial institutions continue to feel more comfortable servicing businesses in state-legal markets.<\/p>\n Some Republicans are scratching their heads about how Democrats have so far failed to pass the modest banking reform with majorities in both chambers and control of the White House, too. For example, Rep. Rand Paul (R-KY)\u00a0criticized his Democratic colleagues over the issue<\/a>\u00a0in December.<\/p>\n In the interim, federal financial regulator Rodney Hood\u2014a board member and former chairman of the federal National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)\u2014recently said that marijuana legalization is not a question of \u201cif\u201d but \u201cwhen,\u201d and he\u2019s again offering advice on\u00a0how to navigate the federal-state conflict<\/a>\u00a0that has left many banks reluctant to work with cannabis businesses.<\/p>\n Military Veterans Would Be \u2018Encouraged\u2019 To Discuss Medical Marijuana Therapy With VA Doctors Under New Congressional Bill<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Marijuana Banking Sponsor Won\u2019t Stop Talking About His Bill In Hearings On Unrelated Legislation<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A newly filed large-scale spending bill to keep the government funded for the 2022 Fiscal Year does not include language to protect banks that works with state-legal marijuana dispensaries\u2014and the sponsor of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act would like to know why. In a lighthearted exchange inContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":53426,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53427,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53425\/revisions\/53427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Marijuana Banking Sponsor Won\u2019t Stop Talking About His Bill In Hearings On Unrelated Legislation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"