A Fighting Chance

In August, the inevitable finally happened: Senator Ted Kennedy lost his final battle. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near his brothers John and Bobby.

I thought about our meeting on the twenty-fourth floor of the JFK Building. I thought about his battered, overstuffed satchel. I thought about how many times he had taken up the fight for working people. No one could ever take his place.

In September, classes resumed at Harvard and I started teaching again. That fall, I kept working at COP, and we kept producing reports every thirty days. I continued to meet with pretty much anyone who wanted to talk about the consumer agency, and Dan kept fighting full-tilt.

In late 2009, I was working in my office at Harvard one day when the phone rang. “Elizabeth. It’s Barney. Come down here tomorrow.”

I asked what was up, but Barney, as always, was in a hurry. “It’s important. Get here.” And he hung up.

When I arrived in Washington the next day, I went straight to Barney’s office, but he wasn’t there. I was directed to a fancy meeting room near the House chamber. In the center of the room were about eight chairs arranged in a horseshoe, and behind each chair was a second chair. At the opening of this double horseshoe sat Barney.

Barney called us to order. All the men—and they were all men—took a seat. I grabbed a chair in the inner horseshoe, but no one sat behind me. I suddenly realized that all the inner chairs except mine were occupied by congressmen. The chairs behind were for their staffers. (Oops, was I supposed to sit in back? Not sure, but it was too late now.)

Barney had spent weeks negotiating dozens of provisions in the financial reform bill. Now, he told the group, we needed to work out three issues regarding the new consumer agency. He began by briefly describing a complex issue that had proved especially divisive, and then he outlined one possibility for how the law could be written. One congressman objected and offered his own proposal. Another didn’t like that approach and suggested something else. I jumped in to offer my own idea, but Barney was six steps ahead of me.

It was an intense conversation. After about ten minutes, Barney cut in. “Here’s what I think we can agree on.” Then he quickly and clearly laid out a compromise that would resolve the problem.

Barney looked at each person in turn and asked, “Are you all right with this?” Each signaled his okay. Barney looked at me. “Can you live with this?” I said yes.

Barney said, “Done.” All the people in the outer row of chairs scribbled on their notepads, and Barney turned to the second issue.

This one went faster, and Barney brought the group to an agreement in a couple of minutes.

Abruptly, I realized that these might be the final negotiations over the financial reform bill, including the consumer agency. Sure, it was always possible that we could push amendments through later on, but this would be the main engine chugging forward. We had to get all the right pieces on this train. My heart started pounding. It was all going so fast.

Barney was already on to the third problem. Minutes later, he declared that this issue was resolved as well.

Then Barney looked around. “Good. I think we’re ready to go. Does anyone else have anything?”

My mind was racing. This wasn’t a battleground; everyone in the room was on the same side, and we were all fighting to help working people. What if we missed something?

“Anything?” Barney was getting out of his chair.

And suddenly I remembered a key issue. “Wait!” I shouted it louder than I had intended; I think I startled some congressmen. “What about credit reporting?” I asked.

Barney looked sharply at me and sat back in his chair. “What about credit reporting?”

Credit-reporting agencies determine people’s credit scores. These scores become a key factor in what people end up paying for mortgages, credit cards, and the like. In some cases, employers even use credit reports to make hiring decisions, so bad credit can block someone from getting a much-needed job. But studies had shown that credit reports were loaded with errors. Some experts believed that the credit-reporting companies weren’t making the corrections required by law, and this caused a lot of trouble for a lot of families—and no federal agency was keeping a close eye on the credit-reporting companies.

Barney got right to the point: “What do you want to do about this?”

I said, “Make sure the new agency has the power to oversee the credit-reporting companies.”

Barney thought for about five seconds, then said, “That makes sense. Anyone have a problem with that?”

Everyone murmured no, and Barney said, “Done.”

The staffers in the outer horseshoe scribbled on their pads.

Barney looked straight at me and said, “Anything else?”

I tried to think. Had we left out anything? Did the agency need something more to do its job? If I forgot something important during those few seconds, I might end up cursing myself for years to come. I chewed on my lip for a minute, then took a deep breath.

“Nope. That’s it.”