With Cromnibus Bill, Our Regulatory Oversight Is at Risk

In 2010, I sat down with Rep. Barney Frank, then the Chairman of the House Financial Service Committee to discuss the abolition of Fannie and Freddie, as well as the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a key portion of Dodd-Frank, which created an independent consumer protection agency that ensures fairness when it comes to things like student loans, mortgages, and credit cards.

With the passage of the recent so-called "Cromnibus" bill, which was ostensibly both a continuing resolution and an omnibus spending bill, part of the compromise that allowed passage was the bank-lobbied removal of Dodd-Frank's Lincoln Amendment, "which insists that the largest banks hold their exotic, customized, and non-cleared derivatives outside of their FDIC-insured entities in separately capitalized subsidiaries" (quote taken from the Next New Deal). While the CFPB isn't directly involved in the types of products the Lincoln Amendment addresses, its oversight ideal is at risk. 

I'm very proud of my Senators, Robert Senator Menendez and Senator Cory Booker for voting against the Cromnibus bill. It's expected that the banking industry will lobby heavily against these arcane regulations, and they can do it because it's very hard for ordinary people to wrap their brains around these things. This is why I'm supporting Elizabeth Warren in 2016. She was a fierce advocate for the creation of the CFPB and she was able to communicate that advocacy in practical, populist terms. That's the kind of advocate we need in the White House.

See how your senator voted here.

As a matter of policy, my philosophical core dictates fairness and equity as an absolute end. The means, however, vary. They are composed of direct action organizing to raise awareness, informing a dispassionate public that is knowledgeable of the practical effects of these types of maneuvers (resulting in not only better policy but also better personal financial decision-making), and, unfortunately, an understanding of the seemingly insignificant policy minutiae that is anything but insignificant. If we're not informed, the banking industry will exploit it, regular folks will suffer for it, and the big wheel keep on turnin'.