Thursday, January 5, 2012

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ... The Simple Story

Sometimes things are much simpler than they appear to be … this is an example.

Here is the situation … Congress, controlled by the Democrats at the time, set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.(CFPB) It was an attempt to institutionalize protection for consumers in the wake of the financial crisis. The Senate, driven by the Republican minority, has refused to confirm a director making it impossible for the CFPB to start operating. They have been demanding structural changes to the CFPB before they would even consider approving any nominee the President presents. The President scrapped his initial choice to try to find one that was more palatable. The Republicans in the Senate have also claimed to be in session even when they weren’t to dissuade the President from using his power to make appointments while Congress is not in session. The President finally made the appointment when the Senate was not in session but claiming to be.

Here is the truth of the situation … The Republicans in Congress have by and large refused to business with the President in an attempt to cause him to fail to be able to perform his job and thus be unlikely to be able to win reelection. There also seems to be an interest in pursuing an agenda aimed at closing down large parts of the government and when possible eliminating or rendering largely ceremonial a large swath of regulations on the economy and businesses operating within it. The President has now, finally, decided to circumvent Congress in order to get things done (things which, by the way, have as often as not upset his supposed intellectual elitist soul mates in the more liberal wings of the Democratic Party). So, in essence: the Republicans have been using parlor tricks to try to force the watering down of this attempt to protect consumers, and the President has now used parlor tricks to get around the Republican’s parlor tricks

Here is what needs to happen: we need to elect folk who are willing to work across party lines to solve problems through compromise.

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