WASHINGTON-If one thing seemed to be missing from U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski's GAC speech, it was the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Long a credit union champion, Kanjorski hit many of the legislative highlights: efforts to impose the Community Reinvestment Act on CUs and how CUs might fight to remain free of it; the need to lift the 12.25% cap on member business loans so CUs can do even more to help stimulate the economy.
But on CFPA, Kanjorski was notably silent, instead focusing on other aspects of the package of financial regulatory reform. "It gives regulators the authority to keep an eye on giant institutions. If they're too to big to fail and too interconnected," he noted, the new legislation would authorize regulators to limit their activities or even disband them if they don't mend their ways after having been told to make changes.
But CUNA President Dan Mica didn't allow Kanjorski to leave on anything but the most positive of notes, coming out on the stage to tell the credit union representatives in the audience that Kanjorski had signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner asking them to move the MBL reform legislation forward as part of the job creation effort.
