Buckeye Reporter

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In Case You Missed It: today, The Chronicle Telegram Editorial Board touted U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, push to pass the Recovering Executive Compensation Obtained from Unaccountable Practices (RECOUP) Act out of the committee with overwhelming, bipartisan support. The bill would protect the American taxpayer and hold senior executives of failed banks accountable by clawing back their compensation, penalizing them for their misconduct, and directing banks to strengthen corporate governance standards.

“The bill, which now advances to the full Senate, was crafted in collaboration between Brown, the committee’s chair, and Scott, the ranking Republican,” wrote the Editorial Board for the Chronicle Telegram. “This is how Congress is supposed to function. Lawmakers identify a problem, which in this case was the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank earlier this year, and propose solutions. Those ideas are then debated, and the result is a compromise, which, in theory, should help fix the problem.”

Read the entire editorial HERE, or an excerpt below.

Editorial: A rare showing of bipartisanship

By: Chronicle Telegram Editorial Board

June 27, 2023

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland, and Tim Scott, R-S.C., are not natural political allies.

Nor, for that matter, are U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance, R-Cincinnati, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Yet all four managed to find common ground on an important bill the Senate’s Banking Committee passed last week that would allow the federal government to claw back bonuses and other compensation from executives of failed banks.

The bill, which now advances to the full Senate, was crafted in collaboration between Brown, the committee’s chair, and Scott, the ranking Republican.

Vance and Warren had offered a bill of their own, but they ended up backing Brown and Scott’s “reasonable compromise,” as Warren called it.

This is how Congress is supposed to function.

Lawmakers identify a problem, which in this case was the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank earlier this year, and propose solutions. Those ideas are then debated, and the result is a compromise, which, in theory, should help fix the problem.

With the RECOUP Act, as the compromise in this case is known, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would be empowered to take bonuses and stock sale proceeds from the executives of failed banks who received them in the two years prior to the banks’ collapses. It would also require banks to take steps to improve corporate governance and give regulators additional tools to help prevent future bank failures, including the possibility of imposing fines.

The idea is that tying penalties to bank executives would deter them from overly risky behavior that could threaten the stability of not only individual banks, but the entire financial system.

Read the entire editorial HERE.

Original source can be found here.