The Fight Over Bank Reform Outreach

One of the more recent financial reform bills in congress was for bank reform. The legislation that progressive democrats are pushing for is to create an independent agency that would protect banking borrowers from lenders that could be potentially abusive. Republicans and some democrats want to either create the protection as part of the banking system or not create it at all. On Monday, the Republican Party representatives on the Senate Banking Committee chose to vote against sending the legislation to the Senate floor.

Senator Bob Corker feels that by doing this they made a mistake. He believes that they should have negotiated on what the legislation would contain, rather than outright opposing it. He sees this piece of legislation as very important, and thinks that negotiation would have been a much better approach than denying it outright. Because the Democrats have the majority, the legislation was sent to the Senate floor despite the opposition of the Republican Party. As he sees it, the Republicans did nothing to profit by denying the legislation.

Because of their choice to vote against the legislation, the Republican Party was not able to participate in making amendments. There was no final agreement of the two parties. Instead, the legislation was brought to the senate purely through the fact that the Democrats have the majority.

On the Senate Banking Committee 13 Democrats voted for the legislation and 10 Republicans against. They tried negotiating but, in the end, the Republican members of the committee decided not to suggest amendments. The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Christopher Dodd said that the Republicans made the choice to say no, so he obviously made the choice to go ahead without their input.

Dodd tried to negotiate with the top Republican of the committee, Richard Shelby, without success. So then Dodd tried negotiating with Corker but that was unsuccessful as well. Corker and Shelby both didn’t want an independent agency to be created to protect borrowers at banks for lenders that are abusive.

Corker feels that the way that things went with the attempts at negotiations for the legislation were not good at all, and now he’s just trying to figure out how to fix it. There still needs to be some Party negotiations, but he feels that the way that the bill left the committee is going to make the process harder for the road ahead with this legislation.

Columnist Simon Johnson has his own reservations. He feels that Dodd is forcing the legislation and that it will not actually work out in the long run. He thinks that it will give too much power to the big banking companies. He thinks that the committee is, in truth, too afraid to debate the issue. Anyway we look at it, this situation is not looking good.

For more information see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/bob-corker-republican-on_n_512600.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/financial-reform-will-we_b_512824.html