Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will take his push to move financial reform legislation back to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, after failing to get the numbers he needed during a vote late Monday. In the meantime, bi-partisan negotiations spearheaded by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) continue on Capitol Hill. Senator Shelby tells Fox News, \u201cThe next 36 to 48 hours are crucial.\u201d As lawmakers work to hammer out a compromise, some conservatives are voicing concerns about proposed language they see as a threat to consumer privacy.<\/p>\n
As it stands now, a provision in the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 calls for the creation of the Office of Financial Research (OFR). The agency – which will not answer to Congress, the President or the Treasury \u2013 will be authorized to collect financial data on a wide range of transactions. Critics worry that means trouble for consumer privacy. According to Karl Rove, \u201cThey are going to have the capacity to go through everybody’s brokerage account and checking account and everybody’s credit card and financial transactions and sweep that information and then analyze it.\u201d Senator Shelby says the more the American people learn about the \u201cintrusive\u201d provisions, the more they will mobilize against it. \u201cI think the American people are now thinking, \u2018We just don\u2019t have that level of trust in the government,\u2019\u201d James Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation says, adding, \u201cWe don\u2019t want to give you that power to do something even though you promised that you won\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporters of the legislation say the worries are overblown, partisan scare tactics. David Min, with the Center for American Progress, says the provision is more about keeping an eye on big business, not average American citizens. \u201c[Regulators] would be looking at the firms themselves, the lenders – not the borrowers,\u201d Min says. He notes that privacy advocates have no problem with the proposed language, and no one is planning to pry into your debit card activity. \u201cIf that was the case consumer folks and the ACLU would be all over this,\u201d Min argues, adding, \u201cThose guys are very sensitive to this stuff and the fact that they are on board with this to me suggests that there’s nowhere close to that type of intrusion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will take his push to move financial reform legislation back to the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, after failing to get the numbers he needed during a vote late Monday. In the meantime, bi-partisan negotiations spearheaded by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) continue on Capitol Hill. Senator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4741,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4741"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}