House Republicans call Dodd-Frank a failure as anniversary nears

U.S. House Republicans marked the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act by labeling the law a failure. Representative Spencer Bachus, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, released a 28-page report today outlining the law's impact on international competitiveness, small banks and credit unions and the overall size of government. The conclusion, Bachus said, is that the law has not lived up to the expectations set last year by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and congressional Democrats. “When we look back over the past year, it is clear that Dodd-Frank has failed to live up to any of its promises,” Bachus, an Alabama Republican, said at a press conference in Washington. “The Dodd-Frank Act burdens the private sector with 400 new federal regulations over the next several years.” President Barack Obama signed the rewrite of Wall Street's rules into law on July 21, 2010, over the opposition of all but six congressional Republicans. House Republicans, who took power after the November elections, have spent much of this year attempting to delay, reshape or repeal sections of the law, including new derivatives regulations and the structure and funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have opposed Republican efforts to cut funding to the regulatory agencies implementing the rules. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, has defended the structure of the consumer bureau and has declined to re-open the law for major changes. Bachus, who was joined today by the committee's subcommittee chairmen and two of the panel's freshmen members, will get his first opportunity to push a bill altering Dodd- Frank when changes to the funding and leadership structure of the consumer bureau are debated on the House floor next week. “We now know after a year of Dodd-Frank that they had absolutely no idea what they were doing when they drafted this law,” said Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a subcommittee chairman. --Bloomberg News--