The campaign waged by bankers, House Republicans and industry-friendly Democrats, which hit a roadblock late last year, has returned in a legislative proposal that targets the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And a key House panel has scheduled a hearing next week to explore problems facing so-called mark-to-market accounting amid the ravages of the global financial crisis.

The legislation introduced Thursday night by a junior Democratic House member surprised people in the regulatory community and delighted the banking industry, which began pushing for a suspension of the mark-to-market rules when the crisis began last year. As banks large and small have foundered and failed, the industry has been devastated by the writedowns it's forced to take on mortgage-backed assets since the collapse of the housing market.

Bankers pressed the SEC to suspend the mark-to-market rules as an emergency measure. Congressional allies managed to get a provision into the law setting up the $700 billion financial rescue plan directing the SEC to study the issue. But the agency in December recommended retaining the rules while suggesting improvements to current practices.

The latest proposal may not gain traction or become law, but it opens a new window on the debate over the highly charged issue of mark-to-market, or fair value, accounting rules. It's expected to figure in discussion at the hearing Thursday by the House Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets.

"Part of this is pressure from banking regulators and the banking industry," Mercer Bullard, the head of a mutual fund watchdog group and a former SEC attorney, said Friday. "It's really the same old-same old."

The bill proposed by Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., joined by a more senior Republican, Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, would create a new federal board to oversee how accounting principles are applied to the financial markets. The board's members would be the heads of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and SEC.

That would put an array of banking regulators, who generally look less favorably on mark-to-market rules, in charge of a crucial province now overseen only by the SEC.

The new board makes sense "because a broader group of individuals with a view of the greater economy should be in charge of applying" generally accepted accounting principles, Perlmutter said in a statement. "As we work to stabilize financial markets and rebuild the economy, we must look closely at the regulatory structure to see what is helping and what is making things worse."

SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment.

Proponents of mark-to-market rules argue that suspending or scrapping them would weaken transparency in companies' financial statements, hurting investors and the capital markets. Critics say the rules mandate onerous writedowns - sapping investor confidence in banks - that don't reflect the true value of soured, mortgage-linked assets and the prices they may fetch in the future.

The Perlmutter proposal "represents much needed reform that will help address systemic risks that accounting standards can have on the economy," Edward Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association, said in a statement Friday.

Banks hemorrhaging billions can be found even among the big institutions that have received chunks of the $700 billion in public money under the federal rescue program.

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., for example, have had to go back to the government well for more cash amid continuing losses from toxic assets and soured consumer loans. They each have received $45 billion in bailout money, and the government recently agreed to exchange up to $25 billion of Citigroup's portion for as much as a 36 percent equity stake in the struggling banking giant.