GOP Congressman Says He’s Hopeful Marijuana Banking Will Get Across ‘Finish Line’ This Session Amid Debanking Debate

A Republican lawmaker says 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.

At a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) raised the cannabis banking issue as members discussed broader concerns about claims of discriminatory debanking practices within financial institutions.

“Sadly, we’re seeing that happen in other sectors,” the congressman said. “In nearly every state in the country, some form of marijuana is legal, but you see kind of a second tier of back door making it illegal by saying, ‘Oh, you’re not going to bank those people, are you?’”

“So people—whether they’re investors, employees or anything else in a lawful sector—are being debanked,” Davidson said, inquiring with one of the witnesses, Better Markets Director of Banking Policy Shayna Olesiuk, what can be done about the issue.

“I think that we need to focus on, as I said earlier, the risk analysis,” Olesiuk replied. “The regulators need to ensure that there’s a proper risk analysis being done of the risk that’s being taken on, and every lawful business and customer and person is entitled to access to the banking system.”

The congressman then said that “we can pick up on that” and “we’ve done a lot,” referencing the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act as an example.

“Hopefully we’ll get something like that along the finish line as a result of this focus on [debanking],” he said.

Cannabis industry banking challenges have come up in several congressional hearings last week, 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.

At that hearing, one GOP member suggested that the issue warrants a broader examination of federal cannabis policies.

The repeated mentions of cannabis businesses at the hearing were all the more notable considering that the panel’s chairman, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), emphasized on multiple occasions—before and during the meeting—that the focus should be on de-banking issues for “federally legal” companies.

The Brookings Institution’s Aaron Klein also briefly addressed the cannabis banking issue at the hearing after submitting written testimony where he recommended that the committee “either combine SAFE Banking with broader [suspicious activity reports, or SARs] reform or enhance SAFE Banking to address the problems with SARs filing on state-licensed cannabis businesses.”

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Meanwhile, congressional researchers recently 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.

While the SAFE Banking Act to address the issue is expected to be filed again this session—that introduction is “not imminent” as some recent reports have suggested, a spokesperson for the GOP House sponsor of the last version told Marijuana Moment last month.

“While introduction is not imminent, we hope to have a firmer update on timing within the coming weeks,” the staffer for Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) said.

With Republicans now in control of the House and Senate—and leadership having historically opposed even modest cannabis legislation, including the banking bill—there are open questions about the prospects of advancing marijuana reform this session.

However, some are holding out hope that a measure to allow cannabis industry banking access could move, especially given President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the proposal on the campaign trail.

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.

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.

New GOP Bill Would Block Marijuana Industry Tax Deductions, Even After Federal Rescheduling

Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.

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