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| July 20, 2010: U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrt, an architect of the financial-overhaul bill lawmakers sent to President Obama on Thursday, July 15, 2010, said he wants Congress this year to take up the White House plan for a $90 billion bank tax to recoup government bailout funds, according to Bloomberg. Frank said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had urged him not to look for bank fees, which Frank had sought to help pay for the legislation, because the administration plans a major push for a broader tax. “I don’t understand how members can say they’re for reducing the deficit and then let Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase off the hook entirely. They were the major beneficiaries of the intervention,” Frank, the Chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, said on Friday, July 16, 2010, in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” that was scheduled to air during the weekend of July 16-18, 2010. Frank also said he plans to begin writing legislation in September, 2010, on a system to replace the housing finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The structure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as companies with private shareholders that have a public mission “doesn’t work,” Frank said. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been under federal conservatorship since September, 2008, because of their losses. “I’m more on the side now of trying to separate out this hybrid thing,” Frank said. “I believe we should go out of here with a version of what’s going to replace it.” On the overhaul bill, Frank said he was worried that if a Republican wins control of the White House in 2012, the provisions could be weakened. He said he was confident existing regulators, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro would be able to resist efforts by banking lobbyists to dilute the rules because they helped shape the bill. “They will all be people who have a commitment to make this thing work the way it was supposed to and who helped draft it,” Frank said. He said he supported appointing Elizabeth Warren, the Chairman of the Congressional panel overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, as the first leader of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the legislation creates at the Federal Reserve. |
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