White House To Make Major Regulatory Reform Push After Health Care: Goolsbee

[jefferson_dem]

White House To Make Major Regulatory Reform Push After Health Care: Goolsbee

One of the president's top economic advisers pledged a major push on financial regulatory reform once health care legislation is done with, citing the need to "not live again through" the perils of the financial industry's collapse.

"We're coming to the closing chapter of health care," said Austan Goolsbee, a close Obama confidant and member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. "The president has been pretty clear that when health care is done he wants financial regulatory reform, the holding accountable of financial institutions, and now he's setting the stage ."

An energetic presence on the White House's economic team (in addition to being, as rumored, one of its more forward-looking thinkers), Goolsbee tackled a wide variety of financial policy topics in an interview with the Huffington Post. Beyond laying out the timeframe for a ramped up effort on regulatory reform, he also hinted at details of what the administration hoped would emerge in the final package.

Asked about news that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) was considering dropping plans to create a wholly independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Goolsbee reiterated that the president wanted the new body (tasked with protecting consumers from credit card, mortgage and financial product abuses) to stand on its own.

"The president has always said he thought a consumer authority was important, that there is a tendency when it is spread over seven different agencies at it is now -- when nobody's primary responsibility is that -- that it can fall by the wayside, as you saw in past years," Goolsbee said, while cautioning that he had not read Dodd's remarks. "That's certainly central in that component of the president's white paper, that being spread over seven agencies is not a good idea."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/18/white-house-to-make-major_n_427014.html

[katandmoon]

1. The president claimed the health insurance reform bill he signed must include a public option too.

[dkf]

2. I'm glad they are finally getting to protecting us from economic collapse.

Might be too late though. Political capital is dead and gone.

[DJ13]

3. This is a year late

[Clio the Leo]

4. For the love of all that's decent!!!

.... can we PLEASE get this darned health care bill passed so we can move on to the next thing!

[Sam1]

5. Right! Now that Dodd has offered to give up the Consumer

Protection Agency little will come of it. If that isn't enough Rahm the insider will make sweetheart deals with his patrons. And what is left of the reform package will be perverted by the Republican minority even if the Dem's have a 60 vote majority. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, "The republicans will be playing chess while the democrats are down in the nurse's office with their balls glued to their thighs."