Senator Richard Shelby has long planned to use his powerful position on the Senate Banking Committee to roll back regulations on community banks and credit unions across the nation. Now, with Republicans squarely in the majority on Capitol Hill, it seems he’s readying to make a move against Dodd-Frank.

On Sunday, The Hill reported that Sen. Shelby and others in the GOP are considering a special budgetary strategy that would allow them to bypass Democrat’s attempts to sabotage a repeal of the unpopular legislation. Through a process known as reconciliation, the Senate majority would be able to avoid a filibuster.

Sen. Shelby said that removing the regulation will benefit small businesses in Alabama and elsewhere.

“The 2,300 page financial overhaul known as Dodd-Frank negatively impacts our financial system and our economy with its ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to regulation,” Shelby told Yellowhammer News. “I believe that it is past time to fix what is broken, and our unified Republican government is an opportunity for us to finally give relief to hardworking Americans. Towns and cities in Alabama and across the country thrive when banks and other institutions can provide loans – not when they are smothered with burdensome rules and regulations.”

According to the Federal Reserve and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, the Dodd-Frank Act caused compliance costs to increase for 94 percent of community banks. A Harvard study also showed community banks with less than $10 billion in assets are losing market share at twice the rate they were before the financial crisis.

Many of the 115 banks headquartered in Alabama fall under the definition of community bank, and would benefit from removing the regulations.