Barney Frank Aide Blasts Media Report Alleging Lack of Progress on Financial Reform

“You have got be kidding.”

That’s House Financial Services Committee communications director Steve Adamske’s blunt assessment of a story today by National Journal correspondent John Maggs on the Obama Administration’s financial reform plan (subscription required).

In a statement, the congressional panel accuses Maggs of multiple errors and misrepresentations in the piece, which is written in question-and-answer format. “We certainly wish the National Journal would take its time to do some quality reporting,” it concludes.

Here’s an excerpt from the Committee’s statement, which addresses parts of the story point by point:

National Journal: What’s going on with financial regulatory reform? I know that [Sen. Christopher] Dodd has a new plan and that [Rep. Barney] Frank is expected to move his plan out of committee soon, but I still can’t tell what the administration’s plan is. Why so many plans? Well, for starters, this re-regulation of finance is huge, so it is natural that everyone would want to drive the train. Primarily, though, the many approaches reflect a strategic decision by the Obama administration. Rather than come out with a fully formed plan and guide the negotiations, the president’s advisers decided to let Congress work out the details.

HFSC: This is 100 percent false. President Obama’s team did indeed produce a plan. They delivered to the House Financial Services Committee and to the Senate Banking Committee a 13 title bill totaling several hundred pages, complete with legislative language, and that language is serving as the base text for our deliberations.

National Journal: But didn’t Obama offer a comprehensive bill over the summer? It wasn’t a bill; it was called a “blueprint.” It was sketchy in its details, and many of its ideas have been changed or abandoned. House and Senate Democratic leaders, for example, now say that regulation by the administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency should be limited to the largest 10 percent of banks. Other fundamental matters were left unmentioned, such as the way to discourage big banks from taking on too much risk — how, exactly, to avoid fostering banks that are “too big to fail” and thus take reckless risks because they believe that the government will bail them out. No plan has settled on how to avoid this problem.

HFSC: 100 percent false again. As discussed above, while President Obama did release a blueprint in early June, he ordered his staff and the Treasury Department to produce a bill. They did. In addition, the National Journal is dead wrong to suggest that we abandoned the administration’s plan. To the contrary, we are implementing the administration’s plans.

Adamske’s rebuttal goes on (and on) in this vein. Legislative staffers don’t typically wield such a blunt instrument in seeking to refute media stories (wining and dining, or even just a little wining, works better with me). That said, it does reflect House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank’s famously pugnacious style.

Yet the shrill tone betrays anxiety about the tone of the media coverage for the Democrats’ financial reform package. Perhaps Adamske is tired of getting blasted by critics on the Right who accuse the Administration of channeling Karl Marx and by critics on the Left who charge it with channeling J.P. Morgan.

“The American people have waited long enough for meaningful reforms, and they do not deserve to wait any longer,” the Committee says in the statement.

No argument there.