Corker Ultimately Unconvinced On Financial Regulations Bill

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are done merging the House and Senate versions of the Wall Street overhaul. Tennessee Republican Bob Corker was a member of the conference committee hammering out the final details. He says not enough changes were made to win his vote.

Senator Corker says the Republicans were outnumbered in the conference committee and that the final product doesn’t hit the mark.

“We had a lot of mortgages in this country that were written to people that couldn’t pay them back. I don’t we really adequately addressed that. The consumer protec tion agency which I’m all for consumer protection but I don’t think we struck the right balance. The agency we created is unfettered, has a huge budget, has no board. We really didn’t change the bankruptcy code to make it work for a highly complex institution.”

Corker would like to see other committees in Congress, like the Senate Judiciary, weigh in to further improve reform efforts later down the road.

“I think there are components of this bill that will allow us to continue to address what we’ve done in this bill. And I think that’s a good thing. That’s the role of Congress and sometimes we forget that.”

Congress hopes to prevent another financial meltdown but some government watchdog groups are skeptical. Lobbying efforts have been successful at twisting lawmaker’s arms to weaken parts of the bill.

House and Senate must vote on the compromise bill before final passage.