Republicans: Consumer bureau too powerful

[TomCADem]

Source: USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans said Wednesday that a new government agency designed to protect consumers from problems with mortgages and other financial products has too much power. They also criticized it for participating in a federal-state effort to force mortgage servicers to change the way they foreclose on troubled homeowners.

But testifying to Congress, the White House official assembling the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made no apologies. Elizabeth Warren said the agency is badly needed, long overdue and might have helped the country avoid the housing and financial crises of the last several years had it been created earlier.

“If there had been a consumer agency in place, the problems in mortgage servicing would have been exposed early and fixed while they were still small, long before they became a national scandal,” the Harvard law professor told the financial institutions subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee.

Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., said the agency will likely be “the most powerful agency that’s ever been created in Washington.” He and other Republicans have complained that Congress doesn’t control the bureau’s budget, that it will be headed by a director and not a bipartisan commission, and that it has strong leeway to decide which financial products it will curb.


Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2011-03-16-consumer-finances-warren.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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It appears that Elizabeth Warren is in the GOP's cross-hairs from trying to do her job.

[RandomThoughts]

1. You do know that Cross Hairs.

Is a Rabbi T comment don't you.

Eurythmics Sweet Dreams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJE_Sc1Wags

The financial sector needs regulation, much more then there is now, not less regulation. Break up the consolidations.

[struggle4progress]

2. It's stuck inside the Federal Reserve, so it's not likely to cause financial institutions much grief

[OHdem10]

3. Regulation of any business is a problem for Republicans.

A Consumer Agency is enough to give them spasms. They
were against the very idea from the get go.

[Angry Dragon]

4. Why does the Regressive party hate America??

[blackspade]

5. Warren is biting a few too many corporate asses I guess.

The republicans are absurd.
We already have the corporate protection bureau. It's called Congress, the Supreme Court, the Fed, etc.
I guess we pleabs don't even rate one.

[Astraea]

6. Oh no! Criminals don't like laws~

Tell us - what can we do to make it easier for you to rob us blind?

[RedCloud]

7. If anything, consumers need to unite and boycott.