Banks Face Pressure on Consumer Protection Agency

As bankers continue to oppose a bill to create a consumer financial protection agency, lawmakers are turning up the heat by targeting specific reforms in areas like credit cards, interchange fees and overdraft programs. The House Financial Services Committee plans to hold a hearing Thursday on two such bills: one to speed up by two months implementation of recent credit card reform and another to regulate interchange fees. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, meanwhile, is expected to introduce a bill soon to restrict overdraft fees. Policy analysts said the message from Capitol Hill to the financial services industry is pretty clear: get behind the consumer agency or get run over by individual reforms. "This is an effort to pressure the industry to negotiate on the consumer financial protection agency," said Jaret Seiberg, a policy analyst with Washington Research Group, a division of Concept Capital.