Richard Shelby

I think this was a gross misstep.

What is critical here is not just checks and balances for the sense of checks and balances. It is checks and balances so that this exercise of Government power by this entity in the end answers to the elected officials who are elected by…

The Bureau's unique and unprecedented structure deviates radically from the fundamental principles of accountability and checks and balances.

I believe it is important to note, however, that we have not and are not proposing--this is very important--not proposing any changes to the Bureau's authority.

This was a mistake, I believe, and it needs to be corrected.

Supporters of Dodd-Frank said that they wanted to make the Bureau independent. What they did was make the Bureau unaccountable.

This concentration of power violates our Nation's basic democratic principles.

The issue is whether the Bureau is sufficiently accountable to the American people. I and 43 of my colleagues believe that it is not.

You would hope so, anyway.

Isn't that a big mistake?

Are you basically telling us we are not going to have a robust recovery, not in the next 6 months, 8 months, 10 months, are we?

But that is not a solution to their problem, though----

Tell us here today, and, of course, you are speaking to the American people, why our economy is not moving, our jobs are not growing, unemployment is going in the wrong direction.

If the Fed does not raise interest rates, higher inflation is almost assured.

The failure to adopt a pro-growth economic plan or to restrain Federal spending has effectively boxed the Fed into a corner.

I believe the stage is set for a resurgence of inflation if the Fed is not real careful.

We need to have--create conditions, that is, our regulators and so forth, where a corporation cannot be hijacked for financial reasons by management or by special interests also hoping to advance a political agenda.

Who owns a corporation? Who does? And what does a corporation exist for, for whom? The shareholder.

The whistleblower provision in Dodd-Frank is drafted in a way that could actually harm investors.

Dodd-Frank's corporate governance provisions could move control of corporations away from average investors to special interests.

The passage of Dodd-Frank did little to improve investor protection.

There was a couple hundred billion dollars of dividends that got paid out of banks and bank holding companies leading up to the crisis that should never, in my view, have happened.

I think a lot of this industry pressure to count debt as capital would go away.

But it sure did not make them any stronger, did it?

It was not really capital.