In the months before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, the bank’s lobbying groups fought a proposal requiring financial institutions to increase payments into the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) that protects depositors from bank failures, according to federal records we reviewed.

As lawmakers now face calls to expand deposit insurance to stave off a wider bank run, the battle shows why that insurance has remained limited — and why any new initiative to require banks to pay for more such insurance could face obstacles in Washington. Put simply: powerful banking interests and their allies in Congress have made clear they oppose measures that would force banks to pay higher premiums in order to fund depositors’ insurance.

On Sunday, federal regulators announced an emergency action that “fully protects all depositors” at the bank, and they pledged that “any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks.”