The nation’s largest business federation wants to slap back a proposed consumer-protection agency designed to safeguard against financial predators, but advocates on both sides say it is too early to tell if the push is a good one.
Efforts by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to defeat the bill for a so-called Consumer Financial Protection Agency kicked off Tuesday with a television advertising campaign aimed at showing the overarching nature of the legislation.
Although the agency, proposed in H.R. 3126 and scheduled for hearings this month, would have dynamic broad powers to ensure that credit and payment products are not predatory, the chamber says it will do little more than make a “tough economy tougher.”
Many small businesses that extend credit to their customers — a butcher is the focus of the chamber’s first ad, already airing in the East — will be hurt by the agency, the chamber says.
Overt consumer protection isn’t the answer, especially if it means more government oversight, chamber president David Hirschmann said in a statement.
“CFPA is not consumer protection,” he said. “Virtually every business that extends credit to Amer- ican consumers would be affected.”
And while the banking industry isn’t anywhere in the ads — to muster a roster of more sympathetic opponents instead of spotlighting the unpopular ones — it has been bankers who have said the agency would needlessly make it too costly for them to offer anything that would benefit consumers.
Rulemakers should take a measured approach, consumer advocates say, but pushing to kill the message might be premature.
“My sense is it all needs to be fleshed out,” said Dale Mingilton, president of the Denver-Boulder Better Business Bureau. “There’s always someone thinking there should be more consumer protection and someone who doesn’t.”
Expanding its campaign to include radio and newspaper ads is part of the $2 million plan, although some say it might simply waste money so early in the lawmaking process.
“No one really knows where this is headed just yet, though it’s about time we had some extra protection,” said Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org, a consumer resource guide. “Think how credit cards went crazy, and now there are laws to stop that.”
David Migoya: 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com
