The new good idea you aren't allowed to have

As new financial regulations bills make their way through the long and torturous process of the Senate, there is one surprising thing about most of them: they contain a surprising number of good ideas. Hell, even John McCain came up with a pretty good set of proposals, namely reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. But one of the really good ideas that has really gained traction among Democrats is the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, an independent organization with independent authority to craft, set, and enforce a set of rules on the finance and banking industries in order to protect the American public.

This, of course, is a dangerous idea. As such, Republicans have vowed to gut it. I'm not sure they're making the right argument though.

"From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema," said Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, a senior Republican on the banking committee. An independent agency, he said, can go too far in the direction of tight regulation without taking into account the effect of the rules it creates on business and the economy. He said he's seen it happen before.

"Can you say EPA?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows. The Republican Party has regretted for years that President Richard Nixon made the EPA independent.

There's been some movement: Republicans who once pushed for total elimination of the CFPA are now ready to back a compromise solution that would make the CFPA subservient to a larger financial regulatory agency, whose leadership could modify or eliminate any protections deemed hurtful to business.

A new EPA? I'm sure that's meant to sound ominous, but I rather like the sound of that. Maybe make it tougher and more independent than the EPA so that an administration can't turn over control of the agency to the industry it's supposed to cover... like Bush did with the EPA.

Still, it's nice to see the old familiar battle cry of "it's harmful to business" carted out for it's ten millionth consecutive appearance in a debate surrounding business. What's that make it... every single law or regulation ever proposed that would subject anything to any iota increase in regulation or scrutiny is harmful to business? What are the odds?

Glad to see that a compromise option is still on the table. That compromise being the same compromise that is always floated: keep the name of the oversight agency you want to create, but completely mangle the idea to the point where it isn't recognizable and all the things it was supposed to do are removed or neutered to the point of ineffectiveness.

So let's see, we have the creation of an agency whose goals make sense, is popular among the masses and the elites, sounds like a good idea, is meant to protect the American people, puts the sectors that destroyed our economy under more scrutiny, and has the support of a large number of progressive Democrats. I think we know where this is headed: Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson getting it taken out at the last moment. That's a shame, it sounded like a great idea. Ah well, it's all for the best. I hear that CFPA would have been exactly like the EPA and would have harmed business.