This week the stakes are high. As the House prepares to vote on the financial reform we’ve been fighting for all year, Wall Street and the big banks are making every attempt to kill it.
We urgently need calls and emails to reps in the House with the message: Vote YES on the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), YES on strengthening amendments, and NO on any amendments that would weaken consumer protections or oversight of the financial industry.
The House Financial Services Committee spent months deliberating, debating, and voting on the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. While some improvements to the bill are needed, Public Citizen and our coalition of more than 200 pro-consumer groups – Americans for Financial Reform – strongly support it.
The House bill will put an end to the unchecked greed and recklessness that has wreaked havoc in our economy and brought hardship to so many hardworking Americans. In particular, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is critical to fill the regulatory hole that allowed unsafe financial products to put our economy at risk.
But in spite of the strong support for the new watchdog agency, the financial industry had little trouble finding someone in Congress to help kill it.
An amendment by Walter Minnick (D.-Idaho) would strike the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) from the bill altogether. And just how much money has this Wall Street Democrat taken from the financial industry? According to our recent report, Minnick has taken more than $170,453 in this year alone from the very banks and firms he is supposed to oversee as a member of the Financial Services Committee.
