Happy Comey Testimony Day! On Thursday, people all across the country dropped what they were doing to devote several hours to watch a Senate hearing. Of course, this was not your typical C-SPAN affair but the first opportunity to hear from the one and only James Comey, who was fired last month after allegedly failing to comply with Donald Trump's Valentine’s Day request to “let this go”—this being Comey’s investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn. While the event sadly did not include a dramatic reading of Comey’s bodice-ripping prepared remarks, it was nevertheless Must See TV, of the sort that compelled bars across D.C. to open early for viewing parties, featuring drink specials like the “covfefe cocktail” and “Drop the Bomb.” Which made it a perfect time for House Republicans to pass a bill that would gut financial regulation.

Dubbed the Financial Choice Act (Republicans love choice!), the bill, authored by Representative Jeb Hensarling, would relieve banks of certain regulatory requirements imposed on them by Dodd-Frank, provided they meet certain capital requirements. It would subject banks to stress tests every two years instead of every year; scrap the Volcker rule, which restricts banks from making risky bets with taxpayer-backed deposits; jettison the fiduciary rule, which is intended to protect retirees from getting ripped off by their brokers; and gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Hensarling has previously described as dictatorial. People like House Speaker Paul Ryan—whose life-long dreams include taking away health care from millions—say the F.C.A. is great, calling it the “crown jewel” of the Republican effort to send Dodd-Frank home in a body bag. Others, not so much. On Wednesday, Senator Sherrod Brown said Hensarling’s bill would “put taxpayers on the hook for Wall Street’s greed and recklessness.”

However one comes down on the merits of the bill, the Choice Act stands almost no chance of becoming a law in its current form. “We . . . see no path forward for this legislation in the Senate,” Cownen & Co. analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a note to clients ahead of the House vote, seeing as there’s no way Senate Democrats would go for it. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo has already said he plans to write his own legislation, for which he intends to seek input from Democratic colleagues. As long as Democrats retain the power to filibuster legislation in the Senate, Ryan and Hensarling may just have to let this particular dream die—for now.

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Speaking of Comey . . .

Markets apparently loved Comey’s hearing, with the Dow closing the day at 21,182.53 and the S&P 500 finishing up at 2,433.79.

There’s two takeaways here:

(1) It is astounding the degree to which investors have normalized a president who, according to Comey‘s prepared remarks, invited him to what was supposed to be a group dinner but which turned out to be an exceedingly uncomfortable one-on-one; seemed to want him to beg for his job; told Comey he never had any involvement with “hookers” in Russia (he always assumed he was being surveilled there, he allegedly said) and pressured him to drop a F.B.I. investigation. As Paul Ryan has explained, Trump is “just new at this.”

(2) Wall Street doesn’t care about anything except tax cuts. As Jefferies money market economist Thomas Simons told Reuters, “the market is taking less of an alarmist review of this situation because there is no smoking gun here. So it's not particularly impactful for thinking about . . . Trump’s economic agenda to go through.” Titus Wealth Management founder Eric Aanes made the point more bluntly to CNBC: “The only thing that could be an issue is [potential] delays into tax cuts.”