A Democratic Senate sponsor who sponsored a bill to legalize marijuana for banking says, that despite attempts to coordinate meetings, other priorities took precedence at the moment.
Jeff Merkley told MEDCAN24 he is hopeful that the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act, also known as SAFER (Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation), will be passed “sooner or later.”
Merkley, in a recent briefing on Capitol Hill, was asked to comment about the progress of the proposed measure. Although it passed through a Senate panel last year, the legislation never got off the ground and is not currently being introduced by the current Congress. The bill prohibits the federal government from punishing banks that work with states-legal cannabis companies.
The schedule of several meetings has been changed. He said, “We’re still trying.” The marijuana banking bill has been distracted by other issues, such as war and reconciliation.
Asked about recent comments Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH)—the lead GOP sponsor of the SAFER Banking Act this session who told MEDCAN24 that he doesn’t expect the bill to come up until this fall—Merkley said, “Hopefully sooner than later in my mind.”
Action—or inaction—on the marijuana banking bill has been a consistent source of frustration for advocates and industry stakeholders, who have characterized it as a commonsense public safety imperative that would normalize an ever-expanding sector of the economy.
In January, the office of Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), who is again leading the effort on the House said, told MEDCAN24 that he would be filing the cannabis banking legislation this session but that its introduction was “not imminent” as some earlier reports had suggested.
A leading anti-marijuana group recently sounded the alarm about a possible attempt to put the cannabis banking measure in a cryptocurrency bill that was advancing on the Senate floor, but that didn’t come to fruition.
There’s no way to know if any marijuana reform bill will pass in the near term, especially with Republicans controlling both chambers. It’s not because President Donald Trump, who endorsed federal rescheduling of the marijuana industry and Florida legalization during his campaign, hasn’t backed it. Since taking office, however, Trump has been silent about the matter.
On the House side, a Republican lawmaker said in March he’s hopeful that Congress will be able to get a marijuana banking bill across “the finish line” this session, arguing that the current barriers to financial services for the industry represent a “second tier” of prohibition.
Cannabis industry banking challenges came up in several congressional hearings in March, including a Senate Banking Committee meeting on debanking where senators on both sides of the aisle addressed the lack of financial services access for marijuana businesses.
Meanwhile, in January congressional researchers released a report detailing the subject of debanking—while making a point to address how the marijuana industry’s financial services access problem “sits at the nexus” of a state-federal policy conflict that complicates the debate.
Separately, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in December that it’s convening focus groups comprised of marijuana businesses to better understand their experiences with access to banking services under federal prohibition.
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Industry remains disappointed with lack of progress made on cannabis banking under the previous administration.
A Senate source told MEDCAN24 in December that Republican House and Senate leadership “openly and solely blocked” then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) attempt to include the bill in a government funding bill as the session came to a close.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) had challenged the idea that there was enough GOP support for the SAFER Banking Act to pass on the Senate floor during the lame duck session.
Warren accused certain Republican members of overstating support for the legislation within their caucus, while also taking a hit at Trump for doing “nothing” on cannabis reform during his time in office as he makes a policy pivot ahead of the election by coming out in support of the marijuana banking bill and federal rescheduling.
In an interview with MEDCAN24, Sen. John Hickenlooper said that the lack of Republican support is the biggest obstacle to passing the marijuana banking legislation. And he said if Trump is serious about seeing the reform he recently endorsed enacted, he needs to “bring us some Republican senators.”
Prior to becoming House speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) consistently opposed cannabis reform, including on incremental issues like cannabis banking and making it easier to conduct scientific research on the plant.
Meanwhile, on the one-year anniversary of a Senate committee’s passage of the SAFER Banking Act in September, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis on the economic impact of the reform, including the likely increase in federally insured deposits from cannabis businesses by billions of dollars once banks receive protections for servicing the industry.
Separately, the CEO of the financial giant JPMorgan Chase said recently that the company “probably would” start providing banking services to marijuana businesses if federal law changed to permit it.
The LCB contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
While this session is six months old, the Congressional Cannabis Caucus has yet to meet.
Philip Steffan provided the photo.
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