Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is signaling that marijuana banking reform will be on hold until the next Congress in 2023, rather than passed during the lame duck session as advocates and stakeholders had hoped.
Asked about the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, the senator told Punchbowl News’s Brendan Pederson on Thursday that he expects to “take it up and get it through” in 2023, adding that “there’s interest in the Republican House.”
Brown also expressed interest in the expanded SAFE Plus bill that Senate leadership has been finalizing because it’s expected to go beyond simple banking reform and also contain other provisions dealing with expungements and more.
Brown has been lukewarm on the version of SAFE that has passed the House several times. But he’s now more supportive with the Senate version that we’ve been talking about, which should include a lot of cannabis equity provisions — expungement funds, mortgage access and more
— Brendan Pedersen (@BrendanPedersen) December 15, 2022
The new 2023 comments seem to depart from what Brown said in an interview that aired on Monday, with the senator insisting that a deal with banking included “absolutely could still happen,” and lawmakers
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