While the new House Republican majority focuses on a vote next week to repeal the health care reform law, one of its members who is closely tied to the Tea Party movement has introduced a bill to kill the financial regulatory reform legislation that was passed last year.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., dropped her legislation into the hopper just after she was sworn in for her third term yesterday. She said that she is trying to take the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank measure off the books because it represents significant government overreach.
“I'm pleased to offer a full repeal of the job-killing Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill,” Ms. Bachmann said in a statement today. “Dodd-Frank grossly expanded the federal government beyond its jurisdictional boundaries. It gave Washington bureaucrats the power to interpret and enforce the legislation with little oversight.”
She also criticized Dodd-Frank for failing to address problems at government mortgage lenders
Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac and for perpetuating a “bailout mindset.”
Republicans made repeal of health care reform a central issue in their fall campaigns, which resulted in their takeover of the House. It's not clear that the same passion exists for doing away with Dodd-Frank, although GOP leaders have made it clear that they want to revisit the bill and perhaps curtail its implementation.
Even if a Dodd-Frank repeal measure passed in the House, it would face resistance in the Democratic majority Senate and would be vetoed by President Barack Obama.
Ms. Bachmann's bill was introduced with only four co-sponsors, although that number could grow in coming weeks. She is chairwoman of the House Tea Party caucus. Her GOP colleagues, however, blocked her attempt to win a Republican leadership position.
The former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is vowing to fight attempts to repeal Dodd-Frank. Mr. Frank is now the panel's ranking minority member.
“Their effort to repeal the new financial reform law reveals the hypocrisy of right-wing claims that they are concerned with ending uncertainty in the economy,” Mr. Frank said in a statement. “Now that we have put in place a set of rules that allow financial markets to function, but which also curb their excesses, Rep. Bachmann and her allies want to reintroduce uncertainty by going back to exactly the situation that led to the financial crisis in the first place.”
