A Fighting Chance (25 page)

Barney got right to the point: “What do you want to do about this?”

I said, “Make sure the new agency has the power to oversee the credit-reporting companies.”

Barney thought for about five seconds, then said, “That makes sense. Anyone have a problem with that?”

Everyone murmured no, and Barney said, “Done.”

The staffers in the outer horseshoe scribbled on their pads.

Barney looked straight at me and said, “Anything else?”

I tried to think. Had we left out anything? Did the agency need something more to do its job? If I forgot something important during those few seconds, I might end up cursing myself for years to come. I chewed on my lip for a minute, then took a deep breath.

“Nope. That’s it.”

“Good,” Barney said. “Let’s go.”

Everyone hurried out of the room, off to meetings or hearings. For a minute, I sat still, absorbing what had just happened. I had always been content to coach people—to offer ideas or warnings—in the hope that they would fight the good fight behind closed doors. But my worldview had just shifted. I had seen firsthand what it meant to be in the room when the law gets negotiated.

The part I’d asked for stayed in the bill through the House version and through the Senate version and was signed into law. After that meeting, I knew that if we got the agency, there would be a watchdog keeping an eye on the credit agencies to make sure they followed the law. I loved it.

As the House version of the financial reform bill came together, Barney was everywhere and did everything. He negotiated every part of the bill, meeting with stakeholders and reluctant members of Congress from before dawn until long after dark. He worked out deals among his colleagues in the House and Senate; he hashed out compromises with the White House. He cajoled and badgered and cut deals, and ultimately he nailed down the key pieces needed to make the consumer agency work. Barney was amazing.

In the final flurry of negotiations that took place that fall, one assault on the consumer agency came on swiftly, and Barney and the consumer advocates couldn’t beat it back. Car dealers wanted their auto loans to be exempt from the agency’s oversight. I immediately remembered Jason and how he’d been cheated. The thought of allowing that to happen again (and again and again) to other people made me want to smash my fist through a wall. But there were car dealers in every congressional district in the country, and they were riled up about the agency. Once the car dealers started calling Washington, members of Congress started caving, one after another. Barney did everything he could to fight them off, but in the end, the car dealers got their way.

The consumer agency was a little battle-scarred, but the important provisions were all there. The agency had survived—strong and independent. And in December 2009, Barney steered the financial reform bill through the House of Representatives.

Now all that remained was to get the bill through the Senate.

Death in Committee

It was Friday morning, January 15, 2010, and the calls started coming in early. I was at home, up early to work out on the treadmill in the basement, and I was still huffing and puffing when the phone rang the first time.

Had I seen this morning’s
Wall Street Journal
? The rumors were flying on Capitol Hill: The consumer agency wasn’t going to make it. In an effort to move the larger financial reform bill forward, Senator Dodd would trade it off. There might be some face-saving attempt to set up a new consumer protection department somewhere else in the government, but there would be no strong, independent agency with the authority to get much done. The insiders sent the word out: Too bad. So sorry. It was a good idea, but unless the agency was dropped from the reform bill, the whole package of legislation would fail. Better to toss the consumer agency overboard and get the other reforms through.

I listened. This was it: the consumer agency was dead.

All the families who had been cheated by the big banks and the credit card companies. All the hard work by Barney, the consumer groups, Heather, Dan, the president. All that knocking on doors and all those meetings. And now it was coming to an end.

I asked if there would be a vote—even a losing vote—but the answer, apparently, was no. The death wouldn’t be a public execution. Instead, the Senate Banking Committee would propose a financial reform bill with no consumer agency. No one in the Senate—not a single Democrat or a single Republican—would ever have to vote against the agency. Instead, it would just be suffocated quietly in its crib. No one would ever know exactly who had killed it, or why.

So I asked my last question: When? How long before the locked-in version of the bill would be introduced in the Senate Banking Committee, with or without the consumer agency?

Best estimate: three weeks. The deal wasn’t finalized, and there were a lot of moving pieces that still needed to be worked out.

I called Dan. “We’ve got three weeks.”

Blood and Teeth on the Floor

The way I saw it, we had nothing to lose. I didn’t want a job in the Capitol, so what did I care if I ticked off a lot of people in Washington? This was our last chance to get this agency into law. If we lost now, we lost forever.

We had very little information about what had led to the latest assault on the agency, but we did know one thing: The Senate did
not
want a tough vote on this issue. Dan explained what that meant: The consumer agency was popular, and, to a lot of senators, a vote on the new agency meant having to choose between angering the public and angering the banks—and they didn’t want to anger either. They preferred a quiet and slightly mysterious death.

So I figured: Too bad. Too
damn
bad. If a bunch of senators were going to pick the banks over families, then the American public had a right to know. And if we didn’t win, we could at least make one hell of a stink.

Word of the agency’s fate got around fast, and the consumer groups were as fired up as I was. No one talked about quitting. The nonprofits doubled down on their efforts. E-mail campaigns and rallies erupted across the country. Progressive bloggers joined the fight. Some of the state attorneys general weighed in, including the attorney general from Ohio, a guy named Rich Cordray.

Within a matter of days, the bad news got worse. On January 19, Massachusetts held a special election to fill the vacancy left by Ted Kennedy’s death.

The Tea Party was in full throat, decrying all the ways they believed Washington had failed. A smiling, energetic National Guardsman named Scott Brown had waged a creative campaign, and once he proved that he might be able to seize the seat that had been held by the Liberal Lion and put it in Republican hands, Tea Party money poured in faster than he could spend it. Brown rode a wave of national anger, and on Election Day, that wave carried him to the Senate.

Brown’s victory ended the Democrats’ sixty-vote majority in the Senate, giving a newly energized Republican Party the leverage to block—or at least to rewrite—legislation they did not like. To those of us fighting for the consumer agency, it looked like another nail in the coffin.

Heather asked me to talk to as many people as I could. Conference calls, meetings, interviews with all kinds of media—I tried everything. I wrote an op-ed for the
Wall Street Journal
. I met with consumer groups and congressional aides. I showed up on
The Rachel Maddow Show
and
Morning Joe
. I went back on Jon Stewart’s show, and this time I didn’t throw up. I talked about the agency, and Jon said he’d like to make out with me. (All in good fun, of course—he knew Bruce was backstage.) Okay, it was getting a little crazy.

But to me the issue was simple: Banks versus families.

And the request was reasonable: A public vote.

Three weeks stretched into four and then to five, six, and seven. The pressure from the consumer groups seemed to be working. New rumors started flying. The agency’s heartbeat was faint, but reports of its death now seemed premature.

The lobbyists bore down. Plan A: Kill the agency. Plan B: Maim it so that it won’t interfere with the big banks’ business plans. They attacked the whole idea of the agency, but they also went after the agency’s structure, trying to ensure that it would be independent in name only. The lobbyists’ message was clear: If we have to, we’ll let the politicians have their show agency, but we’ll cripple it so that it’ll never be able to get anything done.

By now, this was a pitched battle. AFR launched a television ad in Montana targeting a recalcitrant senator. There was a protest at the Wells Fargo annual shareholder meeting, and rallies were held in Kansas City and Denver and Chicago. Petitions appeared online, and newspapers across the country published editorials and op-eds about the agency.

In early March, Hollywood weighed in. Composer Hans Zimmer and writer-director James Brooks wanted to give the agency more public attention. The result was the first ever reunion of all the stars who had played presidents on
Saturday Night Live
. Ron Howard directed, and Will Farrell, Dana Carvey, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Darrell Hammond, and Fred Armisen were all in great form as they played presidents from Ford through Obama. The ersatz former presidents urged Obama to “grow a pair” and fight for the consumer agency. Jim Carrey delivered the knockout punch, starring as the ghost of Ronald Reagan and strutting around the set with an oversize pair of steel balls clanking in his pants. Produced for the website Funny or Die, the video got millions of hits and some great news coverage.

Meanwhile, Senator Dodd went on
Hardball with Chris Matthews
and argued in favor of a strong consumer agency. The same day, we heard puzzling reports that Dodd was trying to water down the agency. But the Senate Banking Committee doors were firmly locked, and I was on the outside. I didn’t know what the Senate would do.

I continued talking to the media whenever possible, and that spring, the
Huffington Post
asked me about some of the proposals to gut the agency. Was I willing to accept a shell of an agency?

In the bluntest possible terms, I said no. “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.… My 99th choice is some mouthful of mush that doesn’t get the job done.” I said that we should either stand and fight for something worthwhile or go get honest work somewhere else. I wanted nothing to do with a watchdog that could do nothing but whimper.

And then, in mid-March, Senator Dodd delivered a financial reform bill that included a strong, independent consumer agency, and he shepherded it through the Banking Committee and on to the full Senate. The giant banks had tried mightily to stop us, but they had failed. The agency would have the powers and the funding it would need to make a real difference. A coalition of consumer advocates and impassioned citizens—helped out by some very funny actors—was on the verge of beating back the best-funded lobby ever assembled. It was a good day for the American people and a good day for democracy.

When Bruce and I went to the Shack for clams and beer this time, it was to celebrate.

One Last Big Giveaway

Life doesn’t stop for politics, and the spring of 2010 was no exception. Our son-in-law called to say that his younger brother was getting married. It was time for the family—all the family—to gather in India to celebrate.

Just before we took off, Amelia made a big announcement: She was pregnant again. Bruce and I would have a third grandchild.

I absorbed the news with a mix of delight and worry. I was (and am) crazy about my two granddaughters. For nearly nine years, I had flown to Los Angeles as often as I could—sometimes for a weekend and sometimes for longer—so that I could be part of their lives. Now a new grandchild was coming, and between COP, fighting for financial reform, and teaching at Harvard, I was stretched thin. I wanted to spend a lot of time with this newest member of our family, but I worried that I couldn’t.

When we arrived in India, it was hot—really hot. Rolling blackouts meant that air-conditioning was hit or miss, and the power went out most afternoons. But for Bruce and me, the wedding was a complete delight. It was a three-day affair, with singing and parties and visits from the Tyagi clan, which stretched all over northern India. For a little while I left Washington behind and marveled over the bride and giggled with my granddaughters. It was glorious.

Back in Washington, there was more pain to come. After the financial reform bill passed the Senate, it was the job of a conference committee to iron out the differences between the House and Senate versions. Then the bill would go back to the House and the Senate for a final vote.

The Democrats had lost their sixty-seat majority in January, and now the bill needed the support of Massachusetts’s newest senator, Republican Scott Brown. Suddenly the senator found himself sitting in the catbird seat. Wasting no time, he threatened to hold up the financial bill unless the Democrats agreed to reopen the nearly completed package to add one more provision: a financial break for the big banks.

Ever since the United States began writing rules for financial institutions, the banks have always paid the costs of regulation. The price tag for enforcing the new bank reforms was estimated to be about $19 billion, and the current version of the reform bill specifically said that the biggest financial institutions would pay for it.

Now Senator Brown threatened to hold up the bill unless that provision was changed. He insisted that the taxpayers, not the big banks, pick up the tab. Barney Frank was furious, but he didn’t have much choice: this last change was the price of making financial reform a reality. The deal was cut, the final bill was passed by the both the House and the Senate, and the legislation was sent to the president for his signature.

A Pen to Remember

The White House invited me to the signing ceremony, which was set for July 21, 2010. The law was named the Dodd–Frank Act, after its sponsors in the Senate and the House.