InfoAnda - Update: Obama Hails Committtee's Approval Of New Consumer Watchdog Agency

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Home U.S. World Entertainment Sports Business Health Science Technology Politics Offbeat Environment Travel News Articles Update: Obama Hails Committtee's Approval Of New Consumer Watchdog Agency October 22, 2009 2:21 p.m. EST Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor Washington, D.C. (AHN) - President Barack Obama on Thursday hailed committee passage of a bill establishing a new agency to protect consumers of financial products. The legislation has been "watered down" with amendments and compromises, according to liberals, and still needs to be considered by the full House and Senate before it becomes law. The American Bankers Association said it remains opposed to creating a new agency with such broad powers. The House Financial Services Committee passed HR 3126, a measure establishing the a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, by a vote of 39-29. The legislation is part of a series of bills aimed at overhauling the nation's financial regulatory system by closing loopholes in how banks and investors do business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had warned that the CFPA would worsen "the weaknesses of the current system that clearly failed, restrict access to credit and make it more costly for consumers and businesses." But the President said the committee's approval is a "sends an important signal to the American people that we will not stand by and allow big financial firms and their lobbyists to mobilize against change." "They are doing what they always do -- descending on Congress, using every bit of influence they have to maintain the status quo that has maximized their profits at the expense of American consumers, despite the fact that recently those same American consumers bailed them out as a consequence of the bad decisions that they made," Obama said in a statement. "We will continue to work closely with Congress," he added, "to create, for the first time, a federal agency whose sole mission is to protect the financial interests of everyday Americans with clear rules of the road for financial products and sufficient authority and resources to enforce those rules across the entire market." The American Bankers Association said the bill was much improved by recent amendments, including elimination of mandatory "plain vanilla" products, but still not good enough. "ABA remains opposed to this legislation because we still have major concerns with some principal areas, including restrictions on preemption standards for national banks and savings associations, and the very broad, ill-defined authority that is granted to this new agency that could be used to justify essentially any regulatory action." The federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG) pledged to continue fighting against further "weakening" the measure. Saying the vote was successful "despite a massive special interest lobby to convince Congress that the 2008 financial meltdown didn't happen and, even if it did, wasn't their fault," the group said it "expects further battles... attacks on its critical provision re-establishing federal law as a floor not ceiling of consumer protection. We also anticipate battles to fix a few troubling provisions snuck into the bill, especially exceptions for car dealers and credit life insurance firms." The bill originally proposed completely doing away with federal preemption by giving states the power to impose their own rules on nationally chartered banks. But an amendment from Reps. Dennis Moore (D-KS) and Mel Watt (D-NC) was passed by the Financial Services Committee on Wednesday allowing the federal government to take control if states came in conflict with federal laws or significantly interfered with the operations of banks. Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) had sought to give states more authority to regulate. He was backed by advocacy groups, such as Americans For Fairness in Lending, which argued the original CFPA bill would "restor[e] a first line of defense to consumers who use these products." But Reps. Melissa Bean (D-IL) and Jim Himes (D-CT), co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition, had pushed for preemption. Nonetheless, the compromise failed to satisfy Republicans. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the top Republican in the panel, argued the amendment "falls far short in providing the uniform standards needed for the smooth functioning of our national credit markets. The framework established by the Watt-Moore amendment guarantees that multiple state standards would continue apply to consumer banking activities." Bachus has also said that a new agency would "ration credit and undermine personal choice." A white paper by the National Consumer Law Center last month said that since 1996, national banks and thrifts have "enjoy[ed] increasing preemption of consumer protection laws." It added, "For most of our nation's history, national banks have rarely been permitted to ignore state law. State laws were preempted only if they prevented or significantly interfered with national banks' exercise of their powers, or the law favored state banks over national banks." The National Governor's Association had also written Congress last week, telling lawmakers they "must first assume federal regulators will act more quickly and efficiently" in order to justify preemption. Copyright © 2003 - 2009 AHN - All rights reserved.Redistribution, republication. syndication, rewriting or broadcast is prohibited without the prior written consent of AHN.License AHN news for your website, business, digital signage network or publication. 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