GOP Marijuana Banking Bill Sponsor Says He’s Not Thinking About Advancing It Until The Fall Amid Competing Priorities

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.”

“That’s a tomorrow thing,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) told Marijuana Moment
this week, referencing the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER)
Banking Act. He said Congress is currently preoccupied with passing a
budget reconciliation package known as the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Asked if that meant he intended to take up the cannabis legislation after
lawmakers finalize their work on the budget bill and appropriations
legislation, he said “exactly.”

“Hopefully in the fall. In the fall,” said Moreno, who is leading the SAFER
Banking Act for the first time as a freshman senator after Sen. Steve
Daines (R-MT) passed him the 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.

The legislation, which cleared a Senate committee last session and passed
the House multiple times over the years, would prevent federal financial
regulators from penalizing banks simply for working with state-legal
cannabis businesses.

Marijuana Moment reached out to the lead House sponsor of the SAFER Banking
Act, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), to see if Moreno’s timeline aligns with his
own, but a representative was not immediately available.

In January, Joyce’s office told Marijuana Moment 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.

With Republicans in control of both chambers and key leadership positions
filled by opponents of marijuana legalization, it’s been an open question
about whether any cannabis reform legislation stands a chance of passage in
the short-term. That’s despite the fact that President Donald Trump
endorsed marijuana industry banking access, federal rescheduling and a
Florida legalization initiative on the campaign trail. However, he’s been
silent on the issue since taking office.

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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The industry remains frustrated with the lack of progress on the cannabis
banking issue under the last administration.

A Senate source told Marijuana Moment 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.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) also recently argued in an interview with
Marijuana Moment that the main barrier to getting the marijuana banking
bill across the finish line is a lack of sufficient Republican support in
the chamber. 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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Advancing It Until The Fall Amid Competing Priorities appeared first on Marijuana
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