A House Tea Party Republican with well-known ties to major corporate handout-seekers is at the center of a charge to weaken post-2008 financial reforms.
Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.) has attached his name, through co-sponsorship or authorship, to half of eight measures on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being taken up by the House this week.
Many of those proposals are, however, also backed enthusiastically by Democrats, who helped carry them to approval by wide margins in House Financial Services Committee mark-up votes.
The bipartisan zeal–along with the lack of a White House veto threat–raises the possibility that they will be signed into law, in spite of President Obama’s March budget melee promise to protect the CPFB from an ongoing right-wing siege (UPDATE: The White House has, according to The Hill, threatened to veto two of the eight measures, including one proposed by Fincher).
According to Public Citizen, the bills set to be considered on the House floor this week, after Congress reconvenes from Spring Break, would reduce safeguards on banks’ wholesale borrowing and high-cost lending, raise charges on homebuyers and mortgage borrowers, and create “unnecessary” loopholes for rural lenders.
Two other bills would open up CFPB to industry pressure. One, set to be proposed in the House with its rules under suspension—a fast track no-amendment procedure that requires two-thirds majority for passage—would “unnecessarily constrain the CFPB’s ability to engage useful advisory committees,” according to Americans for Financial Reform. Although that bill was sponsored exclusively by Republicans including Fincher, and there have been to date no public hearings on it, the legislation passed out of committee by a 56-2 vote.
“None of the bills advance consumer interests; all generally favor business,” Public Citizen’s communications director Angela Bradbery said in an email sent last week.
While there is broad bipartisan support for this slew of pro-industry measures, Fincher’s heavy involvement is worth mentioning, given his eagerness to carry water for lobbyists in a less-than-forthright manner. In post-Citizens United and Dodd-Frank Congresses heavily influenced by well-financed misinformation campaigns about consumer protections and social welfare programs, he has stood out as being duplicitous in rants against government spending.
Elected in the 2010 rightwing midterm landslide, one 2012 Bloomberg report showed that Fincher has benefited from campaign donations doled out by rescued financial institutions despite having promised “no more Wall Street bailouts” while first stumping for votes. In September of 2012, The Boston Globe described him as one of many Tea Party legislators to “have not passed, considered, or even introduced legislation to address concerns about ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks.”
Another 2013 New York Times report brought to the fore how Rep. Fincher pushed for food stamp cuts citing the gospel–declaring that those “unwilling to work shall not eat”–even though he cashed $3.5 million in federal farm subsidy checks between 1999 and 2012.
