Barney Frank: “I yield myself 2 minutes. I am really appalled at the gentleman saying it's un-American. We ought to be able to disagree…”

“I yield myself 2 minutes. I am really appalled at the gentleman saying it's un-American. We ought to be able to disagree more civilly than that. And the gentleman made a misstatement when he said we took a good idea and ruined it. If it was such a good idea, Mr. Chairman, I have to ask the gentleman why was he opposed to that good idea? He's making a big deal of the fact that we switched our view after listening to people. After having hearings, we made a change. That's why we had hearings. And we decided after a lot of debate that the model of the control of the currency, a single individual appointed by the President, without being subject to appropriation, was a better model for the consumer agency. So does Elizabeth Warren. So does everybody else who supported it. The gentleman from Alabama said, That was a good idea and you ruined it. But the gentleman from Alabama was opposed to it when it was a good idea. The gentleman from Alabama was, all of the last 2 years, opposed to the notion of an independent consumer agency. So he makes a point of stressing, yes, we decided after hearings that a single individual would be better than a commission. He said: How can you make such a change? Well, he made a change that dwarfed the trajectory of ours. He went from being opposed to it to now telling us retroactively that it was a good idea.…”