[Vision2020] The GOP & Whores

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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February 10, 2013
Quietly Killing a Consumer Watchdog

If you’d like to know why Republicans are trying to shut down the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau <http://www.consumerfinance.gov/>, take a look
at three things the agency has already accomplished in its first 18 months:

¶It called a halt to predatory practices by mortgage
lenders<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/business/consumers-win-some-mortgage-safety-in-new-rules.html>,
ensuring that borrowers are not saddled with loans they can’t afford and
preventing brokers from earning higher commissions for higher interest
rates.

¶It won an $85 million settlement from American
Express<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/business/american-express-to-refund-85-million.html>,
which it accused of deceptive and discriminatory marketing and billing
practices.

¶It opened an investigation<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/cfpb-college-debit-cards_n_2590611.html>into
questionable marketing practices by banks and credit card companies on
college campuses, which often take place after undisclosed financial
arrangements are made with universities.

The consumer bureau has taken seriously its mandate to protect the public
from the kinds of abuses that helped lead to the 2009 recession, and it has
not been intimidated by the financial industry’s army of lobbyists. That’s
what worries Republicans. They can’t prevent the bureau from regulating
their financial supporters. Having failed to block the creation of the
bureau in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, they are now trying to
take away its power by filibuster, and they may well succeed.

The bureau cannot operate without a director. Under the Dodd-Frank law,
most of its regulatory powers — particularly its authority over nonbanks
like finance companies, debt collectors, payday lenders and credit agencies
— can be exercised only by a director. Knowing that, Republicans used a
filibuster to prevent President Obama’s nominee for director, Richard
Cordray, from reaching a vote in 2011. Mr. Obama then gave Mr. Cordray a
recess appointment, but a federal appeals court recently ruled in another
case that the Senate was not in recess at that time because Republicans had
arranged for sham sessions.

That opinion, if upheld by the Supreme Court, is likely to apply to Mr.
Cordray as well, which could invalidate the rules the bureau has already
enacted. The president has renominated Mr. Cordray, but Republicans have
made it clear that they will continue to filibuster, using phony arguments
to keep the agency from operating.

Earlier this month, 43 Senate Republicans wrote a
letter<http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/February2013LettertoPresidentObama.pdf>to
the president, vowing to block any nominee until “key structural
changes” are made, including a bipartisan commission to run the bureau
instead of one director, and Congressional control of its appropriations.
(It is now financed with bank fees paid to the Federal Reserve.)

These arguments are designed solely to give Congress more opportunities to
stop financial regulation. A board evenly divided between the parties would
quickly reach a stalemate and become inoperative, much as the Federal
Election Commission has become. Besides, board members can be filibustered
as easily as a director.

Other bank regulators, like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and
the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, are not subject to the
appropriations process, as a shield against political interference.
Congress does, however, control the budgets of the Securities and Exchange
Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and House
Republicans have voted to strip those
agencies<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/opinion/sunday/lost-the-vote-deny-the-money.html>of
money needed to regulate derivatives and curb abuses. The consumer
bureau was enacted by law, and now Republicans are using backdoor methods
to destroy it. There is no greater argument for Senate Democrats to ban
filibusters of presidential
nominees<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/filibustering-nominees-must-end.html>,
particularly when the future of an entire agency is at stake.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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