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Pelosi says she'll insist on conference for financial reform bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday night that she'll insist on a conference with the Senate on the financial reform legislation in Congress.
Pelosi rejected simply passing whatever legislation the Senate ends up crafting on financial reform, legislation which is still being drafted by a bipartisan group of senators in the upper chamber.
"What I have said to the Senate is, 'We'll see you in conference,'" Pelosi told PBS/Bloomberg interviewer Charlie Rose in an interview that aired Wednesday night. "Because they have a way of saying, 'We've passed this bill, this is all we can do, take it or leave it.' But the fact is, that can't happen."
But Pelosi said there were sticking points that necessitated a conference, a process which House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the author of the House reform bill, has said should be televised.
The speaker said the sticking points making a conference necessary would include the proposed independent consumer financial protection agency, as well as new rules proposed on banks' commercial and investment activities.
Pelosi said it was important that the consumer protection agency have an independent budget and its own enforcement rules, and that where the agency is housed is far less important.
"As long as it has its own rules and its own enforcement, it can go wherever it goes," she said.
Her comments leave the door open to the House accepting a proposal rumored in Senate negotiations that would put the agency within the Federal Reserve, a move which has prompted crticism from some who fault the Fed's lack of oversight for allowing the financial crisis to happen in the first place.
"I have to take a look at how it could be independent within the Federal Reserve," Pelosi said. "It doesn't have to be standalone."
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