The U.S. House of Representatives voted 255 to 174 recently to expand the CFPB’s qualified mortgage safe harbor to include all residential mortgages held in the originating lender’s portfolio. Similar legislative language exists in S. 1484, the Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015, the regulatory relief bill pushed by Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-AL, which is going to be incorporated into appropriations legislation shortly. The big questions now are whether those QM provisions will remain attached to the next spending bill as it moves through the nation’s legislature, and if so, whether congressional Republicans can again succeed in using the appropriations process to bypass Democrat opposition. Now the bad news: The White House has ...