GOP trying to slip in bank-deregulation in highway bill
Source: Huff Post Politics
The move would jam Democrats on a popular bill.
Zach Carter
Senior Political Economy Reporter, The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- House Republicans are angling to slip two pieces of bank deregulation into a major highway funding bill that is expected to pass with broad bipartisan support.
According to a source familiar with discussions, Republicans are trying to remove tighter regulations that were imposed on banks with at least $50 billion in assets after the 2008 financial crisis. They also are aiming to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- a brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which has worked to prevent big banks, payday lenders and other financial firms from ripping off households.
The GOP doesn't need Democratic votes to pass the broader highway bill -- it has a wide majority in the House. But while securing federal highway funding is a top Democratic priority, controversial riders like the bank deregulation items may prompt a veto from President Barack Obama that would be impossible to override without Democratic aid. The riders could also serve as a potential test of new House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his willingness to use major legislation to ram through conservative priorities.
It's not clear whether the House Freedom Caucus would choose to hold Ryan's feet to the fire on bank-friendly legislation, however. The group of hardline conservatives frequently bemoans "crony capitalism," and one of its most prominent members, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), consistently votes against Wall Street. The move to weaken the CFPB is deeply unpopular with Democrats. The legislation, authored by Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), would eliminate the bureau's single director and replace it with a bipartisan panel of commissioners. Since Republicans are generally hostile to financial regulation, the result would be to hamstring the agency with partisan disputes under Democratic presidents, without empowering Democrats to secure tighter rule-making and enforcement under Republican presidents.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bank-deregulation-highway-bill_5637f0e6e4b079a43c045eeb
]Yes, this is who they are. Republicans would destroy a highway bill to help the banks. If that means highways are not repaired, well...."screw the country, we got to protect the big banks"..in my opinion, a bipartisan panel of commissioners as proposed in paragraph 4, would destroy ................the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- a brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which has worked to prevent big banks, payday lenders and other financial firms from ripping off households."
Of course, that is what the Republican Party is now.....A group centered on "ripping off household"...especially middle class and poor households ..This move is not surprising, just arrogance that they would do this when our highways need so much work, and those jobs would help the economy.. They obviously don't give a shit...cause that is who they are...
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I don't mean in Congress -- they are all upper class -- I'm talking about a lot of their base voters. Who have a significant chunk in the stock market in 401 K's etc. that they are depending on for retirement, but are far below the fraction of the top 1% that actually own or manage the financial institutions. In other words, people basically along for the ride in the stock market, but without the power to run the show.
I have a hefty retirement account, mostly in stocks, and my greatest fear is another unnecessary financial collapse caused by casino gambling by banks. We've had two major collapses of the stock market in just the past 15 years (dot-com crash that resulted in a 49% drop in the S&P 500, and the 2008-2009 crash with an even bigger drop).
Why don't Republicans in the same situation (along for the ride in the stock market) have the same worries, or if they do, how come they seem to have so little influence on Republicans in Congress?
For that matter, what about the middle, lower middle, and upper lower class whites that are the base of the Republican Party? Though they don't have much or anything in the stock market, they surely have suffered during the recessions (and the partial "recoveries"
that resulted from too little financial institution regulation?
