A Stealth Attack on Financial Reform?

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the incoming chair of the House financial services committee. Courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The campaign to kneecap the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill just keeps gaining steam. First, it was Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the incoming chairman of the House financial services committee, who pledged to repeal federal regulators’ power to dismantle “too big to fail” banks, as spelled out in Dodd-Frank. Bachus also tried unsuccessfully to block the “Volcker Rule,” which would limit banks’ trading for their own benefit and investments in riskier hedge and private equity funds. The man Bachus beat to the run the financial services committee, Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), a leading Republican on financial issues, has similarly attacked aspects of the legislation, seeking to chip away at the power of the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

In the Senate, both parties are now set to approve a measure that would drastically undercut Dodd-Frank. After Senate GOPers rejected a new omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through October, their Democratic counterparts offered what’s called a “continuing resolution”—a short-term plan to keep government running through March. There’s just one problem: That resolution doesn’t include previously promised money for implementing Dodd-Frank.

As ThinkProgress points out, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were due to receive budget increases—from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion and $169 million to $286 million, respectively—to handle the new workload from Dodd-Frank. But the short-term funding resolution doesn’t include those increases, endangering the ability of both agencies to meet their regulatory mandates. In other words, it wounds a major piece of legislation not yet a year old. “The implementation of that good and historic law is in jeopardy if the CFTC doesn’t have increased resources,” said Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner.

The continuing resolution has yet to be finalized, which means there’s still time to boost the agencies’ Dodd-Frank funding. If Congress fails to do so, three years’ worth of hearings, negotiations, and back-room deal-brokering will go to waste.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate