Consumer Law

The CFPA Debate: Policy versus Politics

By Deepak Gupta

by Deepak Gupta

Reid Cramer of the New America Foundation released what looks like a handy new paper yesterday on the proposal to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The paper summarizes the case for the new regulatory agency, the contents of the House bill, and key policy issues at stake. It looks like a useful primer on the issues, particularly for those who haven't been closely following this debate.

Unfortunately, I fear that the real debate right now is not about the policy merits of a new agency, what it would do to prevent another financial crisis, or what the agency should look like. Instead, as the Washington Post recently reported, the new strategy of the legislation's opponents, developed by the Orwellian pollster Frank Luntz, is not to discuss the actual legislation at all, but to "depict it as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes and additional layers of government bureaucracy," using words like "bloated bureaucracy," "big bank bailout bill," "wasteful Washington spending" and "unintended consequences."

Think that must be some kind of joke? Then you must have missed this ad (which Jeff Sovern and Ed Mierzwinski blogged about last week), brought to you by the fine folks at the Committee for Truth in Politics:

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on February 17, 2010 (boomark / email).