Senate Passes Bill to Levy Additional Fees on Big Banks

By Stevie Duffin Updated on 3/26/2013

By Daniel Duffield

On Saturday, during a marathon of voting in the Senate to devise the first budget within the past four years, a provision was unanimously agreed upon with a 99-0 vote that would “end subsidies” contingent on the size of the six biggest financial organizations in the U.S.

Basically, the Senate is conveying that these large banking institutions should bear an additional cost, rather than a reduced one, for being so powerful.

According to a spokesman for Senator David Vitter, R-LA and co-sponsor of the proposal, although many similar measures have been proposed since last year, banks will need to bear the responsibility of another surcharge. In reference to a separate bill, the spokesman added that additional measures may be taken as soon as April, though the details of these tightened regulations were not disclosed.

This measure garners the support of the Federal Reserve as well; first introduced by Sen. Vitter and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Chairman Ben Bernanke alluded to the bill during a press conference this past week.

When posed a question of how the federal government would deal with banks that have become too big to regulate and too powerful to fail, Bernanke responded that one such method would be the aforementioned surcharges, imposed on the larger financial institutions who will subsequently need to manage a larger portion of their capital as a percent of risk-weighted assets, as smaller banks do.