Congress has been busy. In addition to the entertaining but inconsequential 'splain yourself hearings with various agency honchos, the House Financial Services Committee and others advanced some legislation. Some bills were relatively new while others had been gathering dust for years.

Don't get too excited about this. It's not as if Congress was self-motivated to take action. They just want to get enough accomplished so they can bring new talking points home to those Chamber of Commerce pancake breakfasts they have scheduled over the upcoming Easter break.

Truth be told, credit unions have more going for them in this congress than the last one. The nine regulatory relief bills that passed the HFS committee aren't necessarily sentenced to a slow and painful death in the Senate. With Republicans in charge, some of these bills might actually make it all the way to a President Obama veto.

See? Progress!

Snark aside, I really do think some of these bills could pass, especially the bipartisan legislation that should have passed years ago.

For example, the Eliminate Privacy Notice Confusion Act once again passed committee Thursday morning. It would eliminate the need to mail an annual privacy notice to members unless the policy changes. You might remember this bill as one that passed the entire House in 2013 and 2012. Maybe the third time's a charm.

The Capital Access for Small Community Financial Institutions Act would allow privately insured credit unions to join a Federal Home Loan Bank. If the FHLB is fine with it, why not? Pass this one already.

Some interesting new CFPB bills passed committee. One would codify the Credit Union Advisory Council and another would require the CFPB to open those meetings to the public. I support these two bills enthusiastically, because the CFPB initially told Credit Union Advisory Board members they were prohibited from telling the press the meetings even existed.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who introduced the bill, explained that the CFPB has been claiming it's exempt from federal agency transparency laws because of its affiliation with the Federal Reserve.

I'm not crazy about the idea of exempting Open Market Committee meetings from public scrutiny, but at least the subject matter is arguably sensitive. If the Credit Union Advisory Council discusses of topics that compromise national security, that's all the more reason CU Times should be there.

Credit unions also won a small victory with the committee's passage of the Mortgage Servicing Asset Capital Requirements Act, which would require the NCUA to conduct a study of mortgage capital requirements. Boiled down to what that means for credit unions, this bill would conceivably slow the progress of the NCUA's risk-based capital proposal. It sounds good, but the NCUA said it's been pressured to provide Basel-ish parity to other agencies. If true, there's no way the President would sign that bill, even if it made it through the Senate. I'm not holding my breath here.

Same goes for GSE reform, which seemed dead in the water this year until the FHFA Inspector General released a report that said Fannie and Freddie are on a fast track another bailout that could cost taxpayers as much as $180 billion. This facepalm-worthy revelation countered the well worn message that the GSEs were profitable and on their way out of conservatorship.

What gives? According to the OIG, Fannie and Freddie's conservatorship agreement requires them to reduce the size of their investment portfolios and prevents them from building adequate capital. And if that wasn't bad enough, the majority of Fannie and Freddie's core earnings aren't being generated from their mortgage business, but rather, lawsuit settlements against bad apples in the mortgage meltdown.

The situation is so dire, the OIG said, it requires Congressional action.

That's pretty desperate, folks. But maybe not desperate enough. It's a weighty vote I can't imagine many members want to make. Dodd-Frank is still pretty divisive almost five years later.

Finally, closer to home, the NCUA is starting to post comment letters on the second risk-based lending proposal. Some of these are pretty good reads. A tip of the hat goes to CU*Answers CEO Randy Karnes, who does such a good job of leveraging his CUSO membership beyond basic products and economy of scale savings. Comment letters aren't due until April 27, but so far CU*Answers dominates the pack.