While most of the world was laser focused on former FBI director James Comey's testimony yesterday, House Republicans voted to repeal the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
With a forked tongue, the bill's sponsor Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said the Orwellian "Financial Choice Act" will end the era of too big to fail, which is actually the oppose of what it will do.
"Dodd-Frank represents the greatest regulatory burden on our economy, more so than all the other Obama-era regulations combined," Hensarling told reporters Wednesday. "There is a better way: economic growth for all; bank bailouts for none." [...]
"To think in a democracy that one un-elected individual [the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] can functionally decide what credit cards go in our wallets, what mortgages we can have on our home, whether or not we even have a checking account. I mean, that's just anathema to me to the founding principles of this republic," Hensarling said while speaking last month at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
I suppose of all that might sound outrageous, or at least it would if it were actually true. Richard Cordray, the direct of the CFPB, does not have that kind of authority. Cordray wasn't even appointed until a year after the consumer protection bureau was created because congressional Republicans blocked his confirmation, and he does not dictate the terms of your mortgage.
Has Hensarling never heard of the Federal Housing Administration?
To say that this will end the era of bailouts may be the most egregious lie of all because it will make bailouts more likely, not less, by making the next financial crisis that much more likely.
It's not as if banks or Wall Street are hurting. They don't need this. No one needs this. And it's not you, the average American consumer or citizen, who will be making the financial "choice" enabled by this bill. Those choices will be made by the banks that are already making plans to reenter the market for mortgage-backed securities.
The good news is this bill cannot be passed with a simple majority in the Senate. A filibuster by Senate democrats will likely be our last line of defense.