A Fighting Chance

The new cadre of Tea Party–supported lawmakers shifted the political dynamic in Washington, and by January 2011 the Republicans had control of the House. I knew that if the banks kept the Republicans trained on attacking the agency, this would be very bad news. But I needed to get the agency set up, so I just kept plowing straight ahead.

I continued calling on members of the House and Senate, both Republican and Democrat. In January, I met with Representative Michael Grimm, a newly elected Republican from Staten Island, New York. In his early forties, he was serving in his first elected office. He told me all about himself. He’d joined the US Marines when he was nineteen, and he had been decorated for his service in Desert Storm. He got a degree from Baruch College, a public university in New York, went to law school, and then joined the FBI, where, among other things, he was part of the Financial Fraud Squad. He talked in animated terms about the great work he’d done with the FBI and the terrific training he’d received. Then he launched a small business and later became CEO of another business before running for office.

It was a great story, and at first I thought: Now here’s a Republican I can build some real rapport with. I didn’t care about his Tea Party ties. He’d been in law enforcement and dealt with Wall Street corruption. I was sure that someone like him would really appreciate the importance of having a watchdog like the consumer agency.

When I launched into an enthusiastic description of what we were trying to get done at the agency, the congressman looked surprised. After a bit, he cut me off so he could make one thing clear: He didn’t believe in government.

I thought I’d misunderstood him. What?

I asked him about the FBI, and he amended his statement to say yes, he believed in the FBI, but not other forms of “big government” and certainly not a consumer protection agency.

The meeting didn’t last much longer, and afterward I kept thinking about Congressman Grimm’s remark: He didn’t believe in government.

I thought about the congressman’s life. A tour of duty in the military. A degree from a public university. Eleven years working in a federal government agency. Government training. And now a seat in the House of Representatives. Heck, he had even been quoted as saying that he wanted the government-paid health insurance when he joined Congress, because “God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation. That could happen to anyone.” It seemed to me that he ought to be the poster boy for someone who understood all the good things that government can do.

I wasn’t calling on congressmen so I could make more enemies for the agency, so I hadn’t pressed him. And sure, I understood the basic point that government plays a limited role in a lot of people’s lives and that government isn’t the solution to every problem. But someday I hoped to get a chance to ask him: Would you rather fly in an airplane without the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control? Would you rather swallow a pill without the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation without a military and fight our fires without our firefighters?

But I wasn’t a member of Congress and he was. And the Tea Party had just helped dozens of people like him make it into public office, all loudly committed to unraveling just about everything the federal government had ever built.

The new consumer agency wasn’t even off the drawing board, and it was a long way from being launched. Boy, this was going to be hard.





The Lady with the Eagle

On January 18, 2011, I rode through the military checkpoint at Joint Base San Antonio. I looked this way and that, hoping I could spot something I remembered. As a little girl, I had visited each of my brothers during their basic training in San Antonio, but now everything looked so crisp and new that I couldn’t get my bearings.

Beside me was Holly Petraeus, the wife of the four-star general who was the commander of our troops in Afghanistan. I had first met Holly a few months earlier, back in my office in the Treasury Building. Shortly after I’d been sworn in, I had invited her to come by so we could talk about loans that were marketed specifically to military families.

She was short, with graying hair cut in a straight bob. The first time I saw her, she wore a simple tailored suit, a sort of civilian equivalent of a soldier’s dress uniform. Her only jewelry was a gold eagle, which she wore fastened on the front of her jacket. The pin was amazing—big, heavy, and ornate, right down to the bird’s jeweled eyes.

The antique couch in my office was low, but her feet still didn’t touch the floor. Her posture was ramrod stiff, and she didn’t waste any time getting to her subject.