Larger Editorials: Why Don’t Republicans Want a Consumer Protection Bureau?

This week has seen so much hoopla over the fight to raise the debt ceiling (which shouldn’t even be a fight unless we want a financial Armageddon) that there’s been another economic issue that has barely been touched on. In the nexus between corporations and government there’s another fight going on: the one to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This is the agency that would finally regulate Wall Street and fight for common consumers tired of being ripped off and bamboozled. You might think this is the SEC’s current job, but since they won’t do (it’s hard to tell if they regulate Wall Street or Wall Street regulates them) it’s great to have an agency finally put an end to fine print agreements nobody reads on credit card statements, complex financial language when you sign a home loan, and closely monitor fraudulent lending practices so you don’t lose your shirt when signing up for a student loan. The problem is that the propaganda campaign about this agency–it’s more “government red tape” and “more bureaucracy we don’t need” according to Republicans–makes it hard to know exactly what it is.

So far the biggest narrative about the agency is that Obama has passed over the woman who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the peerless Elizabeth Warren, to let a guy from Ohio run it. [I would tell you his name but I don’t know it. So we can’t say it will exactly strike fear in the hearts of Wall Street.] Warren of course created the agency and its her ideals that led to even getting it off the ground in the first place, so she should be its first President. However, by the media only focusing on Warren being passed over and that Republicans made it clear they would block her nomination, the media is once again not asking the follow up questions.

Why would the Republicans block the most competent person in the country to run this agency? Why don’t they want it to run well? As a matter of fact, why have they vehemently fought to block this agency’s creation every step of the way? Why are they in congress this very day trying to pass legislation that would weaken this agency to the point of irrelevance? All great questions and all with the same answer: money.

Republicans won’t stand up to Wall Street because Wall Street props up their campaigns. The Tea Party won’t really protect consumers because it’s not funded by consumers, it’s funded by corporations that wanted politicians even more bought and paid for than regular Republicans. So once again we’re left with a party of thinly veiled corporate stooges (they also won’t vote to end corporate subsidies because corporations subsidize their campaigns) and no one there to call them out on it. Why won’t the media ask why Republicans aren’t for a Consumer Protection Bureau to protect the little guy over corporations? Because the same corporations buy ads for their commercial breaks.