A senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee Monday criticized GOP tactics that he said appear aimed simply at slowing down the business of regulators.
During remarks at SourceMedia's regulatory symposium and later to reporters, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I, said Republicans were deliberately trying to prevent credible nominees from being confirmed to regulatory posts, and their legislative attempts to reform the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seem like moves meant to impede the bureau's progress.
"First of all, if there are sensible proposals to change this, the legislative process is there. You put in legislation," Reed told reporters after his speech. "But it's somewhat interesting that before the agency really gets out of the blocks so that you can make an objective evaluation of what they're doing, they're saying it has to be changed. I think they just want to frustrate the ability of the agency to operate."
In his remarks to the conference, Reed said some senators have embarked on a "deliberate strategy to block any qualified nominee for financial regulatory positions, including Nobel laureates" — a reference to economist Peter Diamond, whose confirmation to sit on the Federal Reserve Board was blocked — and he also criticized GOP efforts to curb funding for agencies implementing the Dodd-Frank Act. For example, he called on lawmakers to fully fund both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the two agencies with perhaps the largest workload implementing provisions of Dodd-Frank.
"It is this full funding that is critical to implementation of many of the new SEC rules regarding credit rating agencies, security-based swaps, and asset-backed securities," Reed said.
