The House plans to vote tomorrow on an anti-mortgage fraud bill, which now contains a provision that will create an independent outside commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis.
“The American people need to understand how we got here – and lawmakers need to know how to prevent this type of economic crisis in the future,” said Rep. John Larson (D-CT), who supports the move, “This commission can answer those questions.”
Last week, the Senate passed their version of the same bill, which contained a similar provision, and in the coming days, the differences between the two will be resolved.
On the matter of the commission, the differences are fairly minor.
Both call for a 10 member panel (six Democrats and four Republicans), and both provide for subpoena power. As we reported last week, the Senate bill would allow Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, along with the chairmen and ranking members of the relevant committees to select commission members. The House version confines that authority to the Speaker, Senate Majority Leader, and the House and Senate Minority Leaders. Neither version allows the President any official input.
The Senate bill, like the House bill, confers subpoena power, but the House version would also allow the commission to issue a subpoena by joint agreement of the chair and vice chair.
The commission additionally will be required to refer anybody suspected of criminal wrongdoing vis-a-vis the financial crisis to either state Attorneys General or the U.S. Department of Justice.
After the financial crisis really began making headlines late last year, members of the House and Senate began offering a number of different proposals for an investigation along these lines, but the idea didn’t really pick up steam until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called several weeks ago for the creation of an investigative body modeled along the lines of the Pecora commission inquiry into the causes of the great depression.
