Republicans to Eliminate Billions in Wall Street Subsidies to Fund Repair of Highways

10 Oct, 2015 by John Brodgian

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There’s is a proposal in Washington to cut a subsidy given to Wall Street banks in order to fix our roads. Wall Street isn’t thrilled…

At stake is an annual dividend of 6 percent the banks receive from the Federal Reserve, which totals less than $350 million apiece for JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. The Senate wants to cut the dividend and use the money to help pay for a highway funding bill.

The threat of losing it became more serious last week when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told bank executives at a private meeting in Washington that there was no way he would remove the provision that reduces the dividend to 1.5 percent for banks with more than $1 billion of assets. House members now have to decide by month’s end whether to back the Senate’s approach before highway funding expires.

I don’t know, I’m torn here. I’m not going to lose sleep over Wall Street having some of their corporate welfare cut. However I do understand the concern over the precedence this sets, because we all know how Washington works.