Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.Pete Marovich/ZUMAPress
Last week, Mother Jones reported that some financial reform advocates were worrying that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was not taking a sufficiently fierce stance against a group of House bills that would weaken Wall Street reform. Similar measures died last year, and with some Democrats and Republicans in the process of reviving them, reform advocates have become nervous, especially since Lew has not yet echoed the strong opposition to these proposals that was voiced last year by his predecessor, Timothy Geithner.
Treasury Department officials, though, say there is nothing to fear. Last week, a Treasury Department spokesman told Mother Jones, “Of course the Treasury secretary would oppose any effort to weaken Wall Street reform,” known as the Dodd-Frank law. She pointed to Lew’s recent comments on Bloomberg television. “The purpose of Dodd-Frank was to make sure the American taxpayer would never again be in the position where they had to step in when banks failed,” he told the news channel. “We are committed to that purpose.” Treasury is not condemning these measures yet because, as a Treasury spokeswoman told Mother Jones last week, the bills have not even won approval at the committee level. A Treasury Department official this week reiterated Lew’s opposition to the crusade to water down Wall Street reform, but the official noted that the department doesn’t want to get into the habit of denouncing all the various bills that are thrown into the hopper on Capitol Hill. The official emphasized that Lew’s previous public statements opposing efforts to undermine Dodd-Frank or delay its implementation do indeed cover the set of bills that have been re-introduced in the House. The word at Treasury: if these bills do gain traction, Lew will not hesitate to slam them.
