Dodd, Frank Confident About Getting Financial Reform Passed This Year
EmailABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: This morning President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner met with Sen. Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Rep. Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in the Oval Office to discuss financial reform. Following their meeting, both members of Congress came out to stakeout cameras to express their confidence in passing a financial regulation bill this year. “I’m confident we are going to get bill,” Dodd said, predicting a bill signing ceremony before the Congress adjourns this year, possibly, he said, before Memorial Day. On Monday, Sen. Dodd moved his financial regulatory bill, which the president supports, out of the Senate Banking Committee and it will now go to the floor of the US Senate for debate. The full Senate is not expected to take up the Wall Street reform measure until next month at the earliest. “Obviously there will be some opposition, there are a lot of people lobbying against it, some of the Republicans are promising the financial committees they’re going to kill this thing but I believe we will get a very good bill out of here.” Frank said. Dodd promised a strong package: ending “too big to fail”, setting up a strong consumer protection agency, and to deal with systemic risk. Even though reporting suggests the two are at an impasse, Dodd said that he has had “very positive initial conversations” with Sen. Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee, in last two days, and that he is working with Chairman Frank to harmonize their proposals in the coming days. After talks with Shelby and Corker collapsed, Dodd decided to unveil his proposal alone. Every Republican on the Banking panel opposed Dodd’s bill during Monday’s mark-up. Republicans did not even offer any amendments because, as Shelby said, they knew they would “inevitably be defeated.” “There are a couple areas of difference, but they are I think within reach,” Frank said between the House and the Senate- not getting into details of the areas of disagreements. Both agreed that the results of health care’s passage should be a sign for Republicans to get on board. “I think health care frankly the outcome there strengthened our hand in reaching out to people who would like to be part of the solution,” Dodd said. “I would hope that after yesterday those Republicans who I think reluctantly went along with the ‘just say no’ or against everything are finally going to step up and say ‘look that’s over with, we didn’t get elected to congress, to the United States Senate to just say no to everything,’” “If the leadership tells us they just want to say no to everything we’re going to walk,” Dodd added. "The president and Chairmen Dodd and Frank discussed the momentum behind the ongoing efforts to pass strong financial reform and the next steps forward,” White House spokesperson Amy Brundage said in a statement. “They discussed their shared commitment to passing these long-overdue reforms that will protect American families and the long-term health of our economy, and the president reiterated his commitment to working to strengthen the bill and to fight against any attempts to weaken protections for consumers.” — Sunlen Miller
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It is good to hear Dodd say he will walk away from the Republicans if they just want to say no to everything. The Dems appear to have learned their lesson from how the Republicans handled the health care reform bill: saying no to almost everything.
The Republicans are obviously supporting the insurance industry and now the banking industry over the good of our people and entire economy. It always surprises me that so many of their supporters who aren’t well off, can’t see that connection. Or understand that legislation has to take into consideration the effect on the whole economy, not just one industry’s profits at the expense of the larger picture.
Posted by: Lydia | March 24, 2010, 12:34 pm 12:34 pm
Dodd and Frank just love regulations. They were the two biggest champions of the destructive regulations that are Fannie and Freddie. It should be very interesting to see what the fallout of their latest handywork will be.
Posted by: Huh | March 24, 2010, 1:03 pm 1:03 pm
Talk about two corrupt politicans,and you expect these fools to pass anything that would not pad their pockets? They both belong in a class with Rangel when it comes to lying,cheating and stealing from the Tax Payers.
Posted by: stormerF2 | March 24, 2010, 1:44 pm 1:44 pm
Huh | Mar 24, 2010 1:03:00 PM posted “It should be very interesting to see what the fallout of their latest handywork will be.”
I’ve read before how you loathe “regulation”, but seriously, deregulation was at the heart of this Recession. Wall Street guys will always look for holes in the system, for ways they can do trades without government interference.
After our government eliminated the regulations established by the Glass-Steagall Act, doors were opened. It’s time to close those holes. Check out Matt Taibbi’s great articles about how deregulation trashed our economy.
Posted by: CenterOne | March 24, 2010, 1:44 pm 1:44 pm
@Lydia;
Substitute Democrats for republicans in your post re: supporting the insurance and banking industries and you’ll have the correct picture.
Sorry , you don’t get to blame the GOP for the Dems bad behavior.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not GOP.
Posted by: Teddy | March 24, 2010, 2:42 pm 2:42 pm
CenterOne-Glass-Steigel is only necessary because of the regulations of fractional reserve banking and FDIC insured deposits. Whether these things are good or bad is up for debate. This recession was caused by regulation not deregulation. The regulation of Fannie and Freddie introduced the moral hazard by taking risk out of mortgage lending, and the regulation of interest rates by the Fed way below the rate of inflation was the gasoline for the fire. It also didn’t help that the banksters are a bunch of greedy sociopaths that created their CDOs and selling them while shorting them. But hey Fannie and Freddie and artificially low interest rates made it all possible. If you think more regulations will make a difference, then more power to you. Just keep in mind that there are more regulations on financial markets now than there has ever been, and it didn’t make a difference. Good luck closing your so called “holes”, but it won’t work.
Posted by: Huh | March 24, 2010, 2:55 pm 2:55 pm
I have seen Taibbi’s article, and I agree with much of what he has to say. However, bad regualtions is at the heart of our current collapse, and it is going to get a lot worse as the sovereign debt crisis unfolds. Every bill that gets passed is essentially a regulation. The healthcare bill is a form of regualtion. Whether it is good or bad will be decided in the aftermath. All I ask is that people understand the root causes of the collapse we just went through. While you point to Taibbi, I point to Peter Schiff and Ron Paul. One should look to the people that told us what would happen in great detail, not ones that were oblivious or just dead wrong.
Posted by: Huh | March 24, 2010, 2:59 pm 2:59 pm
progressive mama-”let them fail” is the solution…at least to those that still believe in free markets. You apparently do not.
Posted by: Huh | March 24, 2010, 5:05 pm 5:05 pm
Huh, the recent banking troubles were caused by a lack of regulation.
After the Great Depression strict banking regulations, the Glass-Steagall Act were put in place that protected our economy for decades. In the 80′s Republicans started working on weakening those regulations. They succeeded fully in 1999 when Sen. Phil Gramm who with his fellow Republicans, passed the act that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. You can read about this in Wikipedia under the Glass-Steagall Act to further your understanding.
Hopefully, all of the regulations in the Glass-Steagall Act, will show up in the new financial reform act.
Posted by: Lydia | March 24, 2010, 6:06 pm 6:06 pm
There should be banking reform but this should take place at the State and consumer level: like States barring out of state banks from operating, consumers using Credit Unions, States making usury laws, Judges and/or Juries nullify foreclosure or civil debt proceedings, forcing Mortage lien holders to “produce the note” and throwing out the foreclosure if they cannot do so, etc. We don’t need the Obama crew coming up with a version of SoetoroCare for banking! As Dingle just admitted they want to “CONTROL THE PEOPLE”. That is the motivation. Any SoetoroBankreform would likely be, ideally in their world, like all money goes to them and then redistributed according to race, class, sex, etc.
Posted by: Ed | March 24, 2010, 6:27 pm 6:27 pm
Ed, there isn’t a major industrialized country on earth that doesn’t have federal banking legislation. Continuity of rules is important as many banks have outlets in more than one state, for instance. And with our banks dealing regularly with foreign banks, those entities want one clear set of rules to study, not a different set for each state. It is like imagining it would be a good idea for each state to have their own currency. This would add so much complication to commerce that it would impede it.
Read my previous post for an explanation as to why repealing the very good regulation put in place after the Great Depression, allowed our recent banking disaster to happen. Knowing history is important to avoid making the same mistakes. In this case, knowing history can help us avoid ever having another banking industry melt-down and subsequent economic downturn like the one that we have just suffered.
I don’t know about you but I don’t ever want our country to go through this mess again.
Posted by: Lydia | March 24, 2010, 7:00 pm 7:00 pm
Lydia-I think bad regulation caused it. Because of the crazy 1/10 ratio for fractional reserve banking and the fact that the FDIC insures deposits, we need Glass-Steigel, but again this is necessary because of bad regulation. So regulation is the problem, not the converse.
Posted by: Huh | March 24, 2010, 7:46 pm 7:46 pm
Great Post! HERE is a post that talks about the WTO and the FSA agreement signed by Clinton in the 90s, this was the start of the financial meltdown and severely limits our government’s ability to create financial reform of any kind.
Posted by: dave tribbett | April 12, 2010, 11:37 pm 11:37 pm