As the one-year anniversary of new regulations affecting money market funds approaches this fall, the money fund landscape seems permanently altered. The imposition of floating net asset values and fees and gates on institutional prime and municipal funds scared away investors, shrinking the assets held in those types of funds.

That decline, and the impact it had on corporations and state and local governments that financed themselves by issuing short-term debt sold to money market funds, has sparked a legislative response. But the measures proposed in the House and Senate may have a hard time making headway given all the other issues Congress has to deal with.

As of last October, the Securities and Exchange Commission required institutional prime and municipal money market funds to implement a floating net asset value, rather than the constant NAV of $1 a share that had been typical for U.S. money funds. Prime and municipal funds were also subject to liquidity fees and gates.