Make America Fail Again

Issue: Consumer Protection — Dodd-Frank Repeal

House Republicans voted June 8, 2017, to repeal Dodd-Frank financial regulations. The House approved the Financial Choice Act, which scales back or eliminates many of the post-crisis banking rules. Rep Dan Newhouse (R-WA4) voted for the Act.

Background

Following the financial crisis of 2008, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to “promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ‘too big to fail,’ to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.”

Dodd-Frank called for a host of new regulations and regulatory and watchdog agencies, including the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Office of Financial Research, and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Dodd-Frank also included the so-called Volcker Rule, which prevented government-insured banks from making risky bets with investments. The rule stems from the 1933 Glass-Steagall act, which separated commercial banks from investment banks in order to protect people’s bank accounts from risky investments. It also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures bank deposits. Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 under Bill Clinton.

Among other things, the Financial Choice Act:

— repeals the Volcker Rule, which prevents government-insured banks from making risky bets with investments

— deletes a requirement that retirement advisers put their clients' interests ahead of their own

— undercuts the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

— exempts payday and car title lenders from any regulation

— eases “stress test rules” designed to ensure bank liquidity

The right of the people to peaceably assemble

Donald Trump’s diatribe against NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem is the height of hypocrisy. Trump recently pardoned Joe Arpaio, found guilty of criminal contempt for violating the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Arpaio trampled the significance of our flag in the desert sands of his Arizona “concentration camps.”

As appalling as Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is, the growing likelihood that Trump conspired with Russia to swing the 2016 election his way, is a traitorous repudiation of the very foundations upon which our Republic is based, and over which our flag flies.

I stand for the National Anthem. I proudly fly my flag. My respect for the flag, inculcated in me over my 20 years of military service, is based on what the flag stands for — the values, and beliefs, and behaviors that we share as Americans. One of those values is an abiding respect for the Constitution, under which, “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition for a redress of grievances,” is protected.

Where was Donald Trump when the American Flag flew over the battlefields of Vietnam — on the sidelines. Go there now, Mr. Trump, and hear the petition of the aggrieved.