House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank punctured a growing call for greater transparency in the final Wall Street reform negotiations today, saying there will be no time to air any proposed changes to the legislation in public before they’re adopted.
“No, you won’t have time to do that, because…we have a fairly short time period,” Frank told me this morning.
Whether time was the issue or not, other leading congressional negotiators didn’t appear to have much of an appetite for operating in as open an environment as possible.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd seemed unenthused when asked, saying only “we’ll look into it.”
A resigned Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) joked “if you guys want us to, you know, hang upside down from telephone wires and do it–it doesn’t matter to me.”
Activists, aides, and experts have called for greater-than-normal transparency in this conference process, fearing that, without adequate time to examine changes to the final bill, Wall Street lobbyists will privately secure industry-friendly changes, and hide them from the public until it’s too late.
Frank insisted, though, that he won’t allow such hijinx.
“Nothing’s going to be very abrupt because these two bills have a great deal of similarity,” Frank said. “There’s no room for any surprises, and I can guarantee you there won’t be any. [Any changes] will be within the parameters of the bill–we are not going to ignore the conference requirements.”
