The House quietly voted to destroy post-financial-crisis Wall Street regulations

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While across Capitol Hill on Thursday the Senate was drawing attention for its hearing with James Comey, the fired FBI director, the House passed a bill to roll back some of the strongest Wall Street regulations from the financial crisis.

The Financial CHOICE Act, a massive bill from Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would do away with many of the protections in the landmark Dodd-Frank Act.

The bill passed 233-186 with 11 abstaining. The vote was along party lines except for one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, who voted against the bill.

Republican leaders have said the deregulation bill would solve many of the worries about the financial system stemming from the crisis while allowing banks to more freely lend to invigorate the economy.

"The CHOICE Act reins in Dodd-Frank and delivers the regulatory relief these banks so desperately need," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a speech on the House floor on Thursday. "This will change our communities, because these small banks are the lifeblood of our Main Streets."

Democrats say the bill would remove some of the most vital protections that were included in the Dodd-Frank Act to prevent something like the financial crisis from happening again.

"Today, House Republicans are pushing a dangerous Wall Street-first — Wall Street-first, that's who they are — bill that would drag us back to the days of the Great Recession," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a fierce critic of Wall Street, has called the bill a "handout to Wall Street."

The bill would eliminate parts of Dodd-Frank like the Orderly Liquidation Authority, which allows the federal government to step in if a bank is near collapse to provide a backstop to ensure the institution's failure would not spread to the rest of financial system.

(Read a full rundown of the provisions of the Financial CHOICE Act »)

Despite the bill's passage in the House, the prospects that it will become law are dim.

"Today a bill to roll back Dodd-Frank will take the final step in never being approved by the Senate," tweeted Sean Tuffy, an expert on financial regulation at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Isaac Boltansky from the political-research firm Compass Point expressed a similar sentiment in a note to clients.

"The House should easily clear the nearly 600-page package, but its fate is already sealed as the Senate is expected to focus on crafting its own package of reforms that can clear a 60-vote threshold," Boltansky said.

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