The GOP senator who is set to take the lead on sponsoring a marijuana banking bill this session says he’s not currently focused on advancing the reform amid other competing priorities—and that his tentative timeline for having conversations about moving it is “hopefully in the fall.”
The Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation Banking Act, or SAFER Banking Act as it is known in the United States was referred to by Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio (R) this week. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is the current focus of Congress.
He said, “Exactly,” when asked whether he planned to introduce cannabis legislation only after the lawmakers finished their work with the budget bill.
“Hopefully this fall.” “In the fall,” Moreno said, after Sen. Steve Daines’ (R-MT), who handed him the SAFER Banking Act torch.
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.
This legislation would stop federal regulators penalizing banks for simply working with cannabis-related businesses that are legal in their state.
MEDCAN24 contacted Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, the House lead sponsor for the SAFER Banking Act to determine if Moreno’s timeline matched his. A representative was not available.
Joyce’s office informed MEDCAN24, in January of this year that he was planning to file the Cannabis Banking Legislation during that session. However, it did not appear imminent as earlier reports claimed.
An anti-marijuana organization recently raised the alarm over a potential attempt to include the cannabis banking measure into a cryptocurrency legislation that was moving forward on the Senate Floor. But that did not come to pass.
It’s an open question whether cannabis reform legislation has a shot at passing in the near future, with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and opponents of legalizing marijuana occupying key leadership roles. 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.
John Hickenlooper, a Democratic Senator from Colorado (D-CO), recently argued that the primary obstacle in getting a marijuana banking bill passed is the absence of Republican support. 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.
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