Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who promised credit union leaders a vote on member business lendinglegislation this year, introduced a bill Monday night that would bean early Christmas gift to community banks.

S. 3637 would temporarily extend the Transaction AccountGuarantee, which provides unlimited federal insurance fortransactional account deposits, such as checking accounts used bybusinesses.

Community bank lobbyists have argued that without TAG, largebusiness depositors would move their accounts to big banks underso-called “too big to fail” protections, and take their lending business with them.

According to the Library of Congress website and other sources,Reid also began the process for Rule 14 in regard to the bill,which would allow him to object to it being sent to committee andinstead bring it to the floor for a vote.

Reid took the same route with S. 2231, which would increase the memberbusiness lending cap to 27.5% of assets, but that bill has not yetmade it to the Senate floor.

Because S. 3637 was just introduced Monday night, text of thebill is not yet available. It is unknown if the TAG extension willalso apply to credit unions.

A Senate Democrat website called the legislation the “FDIC TAGExtension bill.” The bill also serves unspecified “other purposes”which could mean a potential MBL package deal for credit unions as suggested by credit uniontrade associations.