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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - December 14, 2009
House Begins Debate on Sweeping Financial Regulation
by: Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
Washington - Roughly 15 months after the global financial
system teetered on the brink of a cataclysmic implosion,
the House of Representatives on Thursday began debating
the most sweeping rewrite of financial regulation since
the Great Depression.
The House began considering 36 amendments, after House
leaders whittled down the 200-plus offered for consider-
ation. That's more amendments than were offered on the
health care legislation that moved through the House
earlier this year, and it speaks to the contentious
nature of financial revisions.
Just earlier this week, the House vote was uncertain as
moderate Democrats threatened to withhold their support
unless they got the chance to offer pro-business amend-
ments. The Treasury Department and House Financial
Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.,
agreed to give them more room to offer amendments.
Frank's own "manager's amendment," reserved for the
person who's shepherding the legislation through the
voting process, included 51 provisions that incorporated
amendments that had been among the more than 200 offered
for consideration.
Voting on the 36 amendments is to conclude Friday, followed
by an expected vote on the broad Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act of 2009 as amended.
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Frank's legislation stitches together a number of
regulatory bills that moved this year through the House
Financial Services Committee and the House Agriculture
Committee.
These bills would:
* Provide first-ever regulation for exotic financial
instruments such as the insurance-like credit-default
swaps.
* Abolish the Office of Thrift Supervision.
* Create a Financial Services Oversight Council to police
the financial system.
* Create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to regulate
consumer credit products such as mortgages, payday loans
and credit cards.
Addressing one of the key failures in the recent financial
crisis, the act also would create a so-called Resolution
Authority, a legal way of breaking apart failing
institutions that are so large that their collapse
threatens the broader financial system.
Many proposed amendments, later filtered out, amounted to
political theater.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, sought to use the revamp
bill to prohibit the Obama administration from transferring
to the United States any prisoner at the U.S. military
prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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New York Republican Rep. Christopher Lee sought to limit
any financial disclosures to consumers to those presented
in the English language.
Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich sought to impose a
70 percent tax on corporate profits registered by financial
firms that have yet to repay their taxpayer bailout money.
The big test for Frank and the Obama administration will
come on the 34th amendment to be debated.
Conservative Democrats such as Rep. Heath Shuler of North
Carolina, Rep. Walt Minnick of Idaho and Rep. Travis
Childers of Mississippi teamed up with moderate Republicans
such as Rep. Michael Castle of Delaware and Rep. Aaron
Schock of Illinois to offer an alternative to the Consumer
Financial Protection Agency.
Financial giants such as Bank of America and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying heavyweight, have tried
to kill the consumer panel. To that end, the bipartisan
group of moderates is offering instead a Consumer
Financial Protection Council.
It would be made up of 12 members, including most federal
bank regulators, and would do much of what the Consumer
Financial Protection Agency would do but it wouldn't
create a standalone agency with new regulatory powers.
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The final amendment belongs to Republicans, who'll offer
an alternative bill that would establish a new chapter in
the bankruptcy code instead of the so-called Resolution
Authority, and more generally would weaken much of Frank's
broad attempt to regulate Wall Street.
Other areas of intrigue include an amendment by Rep. John
Conyers, D-Mich., that would allow bankruptcy judges to
adjust the terms of distressed mortgages to prevent banks
from foreclosing on borrowers.
Another fight will be over proposed new rules for the
exotic financial instruments called derivatives. Big Wall
Street banks have made billions in profits from these
instruments, and several Democratic amendments seek to
toughen the first-ever regulation of them and reduce the
exceptions that were carved out from the legislation as
it moved through committees.
On derivatives, bank lobbying has been matched step for
step by consumer advocates.
"For the first time in my memory, there's a level playing
field as far as lobbying is concerned," said Michael
Greenberger, a former regulator and University of Maryland
law professor who's part of the coalition Americans for
Financial Reform. "The people who want meaningful reform
and the people who want to weaken the bill are engaged in
a fair fight, so to speak, and that's a big change."
The Senate Banking Committee began work this month on its
own version of regulatory reform.
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