Cannabis News of Note for the Week:
Punchbowl News: Blumenauer sees waning ‘appetite’ for weed banking in lame duck (paywalled, full text below)
Ask a Pol Podcast: Sen. Schmitt supports “clean version” of SAFER Banking Act (while it says it is paywalled, you can access the audio and transcript if you scroll down further)
Green Market Report: Benzinga cannabis conference fueled by optimism, rooted in reality
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Punchbowl News: Blumenauer sees waning ‘appetite’ for weed banking in lame duck
Brendan Pedersen
October 8, 2024
The House’s top advocate for cannabis banking reform doesn’t see much of an opening for the legislation to become law in the upcoming lame-duck session.
We don’t blame anyone for being pessimistic about policy during an election year. But getting a bill like the SAFER Banking Act passed has been a recurring lame-duck target among advocates for years now
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) recently took up the mantle of cannabis banking champion in the House after former Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) retired at the end of 2022. The Colorado Democrat had been pushing proposals that would make it easier for banks to work with state-legal cannabis firms for about a decade.
But when we last checked in with Blumenauer, he wasn’t sounding too bullish about a year-end push.
“There’s less appetite than there has been,” the Oregon Democrat said. “We’re not getting anything done.”
He’s not wrong! This is actually one of the few areas where the Senate Banking Committee has been more active than the House Financial Services Committee. Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) advanced the SAFER Banking Act last year, which was an expanded version of Perlmutter’s SAFE Banking Act introduced in 2017.
But in the House, Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) has remained publicly opposed to the thrust of cannabis banking. He’s told us before that he won’t stand in the way of legislation — which has previously passed the House with significant Republican support — but the lack of enthusiasm and broader dysfunction have left the proposal frozen.
It remains to be seen what the lame duck actually looks like. The election is too close to call. But a lot of key lawmakers, McHenry included, will be headed for the exits after this session. A lot can happen during that crunch time with legacies on the line.