The Leadership Conference Hails House Passage of Final Financial Reform Legislation

Last night, the House of Representatives passed 237-192 the final financial reform bill that emerged from the House-Senate conference committee last week. 

The legislation is designed to create an effective regulatory structure for Wall Street in order to stave off future crises that can wreck the economy and upend the lives of millions of Americans.  It also creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with broad regulatory powers to protect consumers from abusive lending practices that contributed to the current economic meltdown.  The bureau will include a civil rights office focused exclusively on fighting discriminatory lending.

In a statement, Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said:

“The need for this bill couldn’t be more obvious. Years of deregulation have resulted in a financial system that privatized the gains and socialized the losses. The Dodd-Frank bill will help end Wall Street’s reckless practices, and includes a number of common-sense provisions that civil rights, consumer, and labor advocates have sought for years – like requiring lenders to make sure that borrowers can repay their mortgages and creating a consumer regulator to do the job that Wall Street regulators didn’t do.

For years, Wall Street has operated like a casino for the benefit of a greedy few. It’s time to padlock the casino doors. The civil and human rights coalition strongly supports the conference report, and we look forward to getting it through the Senate and enacted into law.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the bill after the July 4 recess.  The bill will then go to President Obama for his signature.