REVIEW Act of 2025
Introduced December 9, 2025 · Last action February 25, 2026
Plain English Summary
This bill requires federal financial regulators to review the cumulative impact of their own regulations every 5 years instead of every 10 years, and to assess how those regulations affect consumer access to financial products, credit availability, financial firm operations, and overall economic activity. Each regulator must also internally evaluate whether regulations are duplicative, outdated, or unnecessarily burdensome, and make recommendations to streamline or eliminate them.
Who benefits
Banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and other financial institutions seeking to reduce regulatory compliance costs and burden; mortgage lenders, auto lenders, and consumer finance companies operating under federal oversight; fintech firms and nonfinancial companies offering financial services who face regulatory requirements; compliance and legal departments of financial institutions that may benefit from simplified or eliminated rules.
Who pays / loses
Consumers who may lose protections if consumer-protection-focused regulations are identified as burdensome and eliminated or weakened; depositors and borrowers who rely on safety and soundness regulations that might be streamlined; community banks and credit unions lacking resources to lobby for favorable regulatory interpretations during the review process; taxpayers potentially bearing costs from future financial instability if regulations are weakened without adequate cost-benefit analysis.
Funding & Lobbying Interests
The financial services industry has a direct economic stake in regulatory reduction and streamlining. Rep. Timmons received $35,994.50 in campaign contributions from the Finance industry in the 2024 cycle, his second-largest source of contributions. Financial institutions face ongoing compliance costs and regulatory uncertainty, making them natural proponents of internal regulatory audits designed to identify and eliminate rules deemed burdensome. No PAC contributions were reported, but the sponsor's finance industry support aligns with industry preference for deregulation and cost-reduction.
Political Impact
Affected Groups
Community banks and credit unions (institutions with limited compliance staff will face lower burden from regulatory documentation but may lack resources to influence favorable outcomes); consumers in underserved markets (regulatory reductions could reduce product availability or access in lower-income or rural areas); large financial institutions (primary beneficiaries of deregulation); mortgage borrowers, auto borrowers, and credit card users (protections embedded in regulations may be affected).
Political Subtext
Proponents frame this as efficiency reform: regulators reviewing their own rules every 5 years will identify outdated and duplicative requirements, reducing compliance costs for financial institutions and freeing resources for lending and consumer products. Critics worry this institutionalizes a 'regulatory self-review' process biased toward deregulation, since the agencies conducting the reviews are primarily accountable to the financial institutions they supervise, not to consumers or Congress. They note that internal reviews asking regulators to identify their own rules as 'unnecessarily burdensome' creates structural incentives to weaken protections. The bill does not require independent cost-benefit analysis or congressional override mechanisms; it relies on regulatory agencies to propose reductions in their own rules. Non-partisan evidence on financial regulation shows that removing protections typically increases institutional risk-taking and can reduce credit access for lower-income consumers (documented in housing and auto lending after post-2008 deregulation relaxation).
Real-World Stakes
If this passes, federal banking regulators (the Federal Reserve, OCC, FDIC, NCUA, CFPB, and state banking authorities) will spend more staff time conducting internal regulatory audits every 5 years instead of every 10 years. Rules identified as 'unnecessarily burdensome' will likely face pressure for removal or weakening. Historical precedent: similar deregulation efforts in the 1980s and 1990s (the Riegle-Neal Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) reduced restrictions on bank activities and product bundling, contributing to increased concentration in banking and, during the 2008 financial crisis, systemic instability. Post-2008, Dodd-Frank regulations restored stricter rules; the stress tests and capital requirements mandated by those rules reduced the probability of major bank failures between 2010 and 2020 (documented by CBO and Federal Reserve studies). Shortening the review cycle from 10 to 5 years creates more frequent pressure to deregulate. For consumers, outcomes depend on which rules are targeted: elimination of disclosure requirements would reduce information available for product comparison; weakening of fair lending enforcement could reduce access for minority borrowers; reduction of anti-predatory lending rules could increase high-cost borrowing. Financial institutions will benefit immediately from reduced compliance costs; systemic risks from deregulation typically emerge 5–10 years after implementation.
Sponsor
Vote Record
No recorded votes.
Campaign Finance — Primary Sponsor
Top contributing industries
Other$222,978.14
Finance$35,994.5
Energy$3,500
Technology$2,507.5
Healthcare$1,000
501(c)(4) disclosure: Contributions from 501(c)(4) "dark money" organizations are not required to be publicly disclosed and are not reflected in the figures above. Data sourced from FEC public disclosure filings.
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