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GOP’s Attempts To Gut Dodd-Frank Bill: A Nod to Wall Street

March 16, 2011

GOP’s Attempts To Gut Dodd-Frank Bill: A Nod to Wall Street

Statement of Bartlett Naylor, Financial Policy Advocate, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

By trying to undo provisions passed in last year’s financial reform, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises insults Americans still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures wrought by Wall Street recklessness.

Congress worked for more than a year, counseled by numerous study commissions, to approve a reform law. Regulators have yet to implement The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act to help repair our still fragile capital markets, but now Republicans propose gutting key provisions.

The House Republicans claim to be helping small business, but what their bills would actually do is help Wall Street – at a time when they should be working to help struggling American families.

Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), who raised $124,000 from Wall Street – the second-largest source of her campaign funding – has proposed a bill eliminating a requirement to publish the ratio of pay between the CEO and the median paid employee for companies owned by shareholders. She said that this requirement would be an enormous administrative burden. Does this imply that companies don’t already know how much they pay their employees?

These provisions were established to protect the American people from Wall Street giants and shine sunlight on their actions; Congress has a duty to provide this service and protect the public.

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Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.