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USA TODAY

Fresh off their vote to end health coverage for 24 million people, House Republicans are pushing a plan that would please Wall Street — and increase the chances of another financial crisis and taxpayer bailout.

The main purpose of the plan, approved in committee this month on a party-line vote, is to allow major financial houses to bump up their profits by taking greater risks, knowing that their multitrillion dollar balance sheets would force future presidents and congresses to bail them out should they get in over their heads.

A secondary purpose is to loosen consumer regulations that, in some cases, restrain an entitled banking culture that has repeatedly committed jaw-dropping fraudulent acts over the past 15 years.

The so-called Financial CHOICE Act would, among other things:

Allow for greater subprime lending, the practice that caused the 2008 financial crisis and would cause further crises if it gets out of control.

Give Wall Street houses the ability to make casino-like bets with the capital they need to shore up their balance sheets and keep them solvent in crises.

Reduce the number of audits, known as “stress tests,” that the largest banks must undergo.

Neuter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that helped uncover the Wells Fargo fake account scandal and unsavory practices at other institutions.

A few short years ago, none of this would have been imaginable. After the housing bust, onetime masters of the universe on Wall Street were too embarrassed to ask Washington for gifts.

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What they had done was clear to see. They had blinded themselves to obvious and massive risks undertaken for quick profits. They had paid credit agencies handsome sums to slap AAA ratings on bundles of toxic mortgages. They had made long-term bets using cash from short-term loans. And they convinced themselves and those in government that everything they were doing must be normal because everyone was doing it.

In the past few years, however, the mea culpas have come to an end. Under pressure to improve quarterly returns and pad bonuses, Wall Street now sees its Washington lobbying arm as a profit center that can deliver favorable legislation.

Not wanting to be tagged as the shills for big banks, the authors of this legislation are peddling the fiction that Wall Street doesn’t like this legislation because it somehow ends the policy of “too big to fail.”

Too big to fail — the notion that a bank could be so large that governments would be forced to at least partially bail it out if it foundered — is a maddening concept. But it is not a policy and cannot be repealed.

Any financial institution with liabilities in the range of $1 trillion or more cannot fail without doing massive harm to the global economy. Today, 30 institutions worldwide fit that bill.

There are only two options: Impose the kind of restrictions that Congress and foreign governments did in 2009 and 2010, or split those 30 banks into about 120 and mandate that any institution would have to divide again once it reaches a certain size.

The idea that members of Congress would give Wall Street virtually everything on its checklist and then declare that they are making financial markets safer would be laughable — if it weren’t so tragic.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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