Barney Frank: “Once again, we see this pattern. The gentleman from New Jersey objected before and said I am imputing motives to them.…”

“Once again, we see this pattern. The gentleman from New Jersey objected before and said I am imputing motives to them. Yes, I was imputing to them the notion that they knew what they were doing last year when they overwhelmingly, unanimously opposed an independent agency. I don't know who's kidding whom. They don't like the idea of an independent agency. They do know that politically it's kind of popular, so the tactic is to chip at it here and chip at it there and to do a series of nonreciprocal requirements. It is clearly the stepchild, the Cinderella of the financial regulators. It's the only financial regulator that can be overruled by the other financial regulator. They say, How can you have an individual entity? But Members have been here 20 years, and comparable times they have never moved to make the Comptroller of the Currency a commission. They've never moved to subject the Comptroller of the Currency to the appropriation. The consumer chief is just like the Comptroller of the Currency, but that's a banking agency. That's one of those agencies that the chairman of the committee says is there to serve the banks. And as he said in his statement today, they don't worry about the Federal Reserve and the FDIC--with the terrible record the Federal Reserve has had on consumer protection. He said, the chairman of the committee from Alabama, we are worried about an agency whose sole goal is to protect consumers. So this is one more thing.…”