A Fighting Chance

As some of the nonprofits started to champion the idea of a consumer agency, I did my best to ratchet up my help. I talked to just about everyone I knew (and plenty of people I didn’t know), trying to gin up more support. I knew next to nothing about how to get a bill passed in Washington. At this point, my only experience in the legislative arena had involved an effort to get a bankruptcy bill stopped, and I’d failed at that. But I figured the best way to begin was just to start talking and see if I could convince people that the agency was a good idea.

I found some unexpected support from one of my students. He was a tall, redheaded kid who in 2006 had sat in the front row in my freshman contract law class at Harvard. In fact, he had the honor that year of being the first student called on—and the first to botch the answer. During the year, he had come by my office several times to learn more about the economic pressures on American families. When the crash hit in the fall of 2008, the redhead was in my advanced bankruptcy class. By now, he was volunteering as an unpaid, part-time intern for Massachusetts congressman Bill Delahunt, who represented a district that stretched from the southern Boston suburbs out to Cape Cod and the Islands. In one more twist of fate, Congressman Delahunt had already been working with Congressman Brad Miller from North Carolina—a real hero to struggling families—to try to boost the consumer agency. After the crash, the redhead offered to work with the congressmen to help promote the idea.

And that redheaded student? That was Joe Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy’s grandson. (A few years later, Congressman Barney Frank would retire, and thirty-two-year-old Joe would win his old congressional seat.)

I also went back to our champion from the bankruptcy wars, Joe’s great-uncle Senator Ted Kennedy. The senator and I had talked about the concept of a consumer agency a year or so earlier, but at the time my idea seemed improbable at best. When I talked with him again in February 2009, he was battling a brain tumor, but he was driving himself hard. I told him I thought this was the time to push for the agency.

The senator said cheerfully, “You know the bankers will hate this?”

I said I understood it wouldn’t be easy.

He laughed and said, “It never is with you.”

And just like that, he was in.

Senator Kennedy joined forces with Senator Durbin from Illinois and Senator Schumer from New York and quickly came up with a plan. In early March, the three senators would introduce the consumer agency as a stand-alone bill in the Senate, well ahead of the broader financial reform bill that would be coming later. Congressman Delahunt (with Joe Kennedy’s help) and Congressman Miller were ready to go, eager to take on the fight for the agency in the House. The lawmakers would announce the new bill at a press conference—and I was invited.

I was goose-bump excited. Wow! A year earlier, the agency had been little more than an article in a small policy journal. Now it was picking up steam in Congress. Zing! Bang! I had visions of a huge public push, debates on the floor of the Senate and House, a great signing ceremony.

On March 10, the lawmakers held a press conference inside the Capitol, just a short distance from a flock of reporters whose full-time job was to stake out the Hill. We had some pretty fancy senators and congressmen, right there in person, ready to answer questions. I figured it would be a standing-room-only crowd and that everyone would be breathless to hear about a new idea.

In fact, the whole thing was, um, orderly and efficient. We got some solid news articles out of the announcement, but hardly the brass bands and confetti of my fevered dreams.

Senator Kennedy later gently explained to me how a press conference like this worked. Introducing the bill to the media and the public was a way to signal that the agency was important, and getting a round of news stories about it was really good. But this was just a first step, and big changes take time. Trying to reassure me, the senator said he was confident that someday we would get the agency.

I wanted to believe him, but I had really hoped this announcement would give the bill a lot more momentum than it did. The press coverage was helpful, but after a couple of days, the media moved on. I was impatient—wildly impatient—because I thought that if we couldn’t get the agency airborne now, it would never fly.

Then, nine days after the press conference, the agency got another boost.

President Obama appeared on The Jay Leno Show. He was just fifty-nine days into his first term, and he spent a good deal of his time on the show talking about the mess on Wall Street. And then he said we needed better laws to protect consumers who buy financial products—and he talked about toasters!

When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face—there’s a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there’s no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you’re going to be protected.



Now we were moving! Go, Mr. President, go!

Barney’s In