Uncovering Waste, Fraud& Abuse and Protecting the American People

As America’s Watchdog, John Dingell fights to protect consumers every day. He helped to establish the Consumer Product Safety Commission and he recently authored legislation that became law to strengthen the Commission, instituting the strongest lead standard in the world for children’s products and significantly increasing funding and staff at the Commission.

Few legislators can demonstrate a record of fighting government waste and corporate corruption like Congressman Dingell, who was a leader in the fight against deregulation of Wall Street.  Dingell even warned in 1999 of the bank bailouts necessitated by deregulation, saying: “You are going to find that they are too big to fail, so the Fed is going to be in and other Federal agencies are going to be in to bail them out.  Just expect that.”  Unfortunately he was proven correct on his forewarning.

To ensure that an economic crisis like the current one cannot happen again, Congressman Dingell was a leader in the recent fight to crack down on Wall Street.  The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which contained many provisions similar to those authored by Congressman Dingell, cracks down on Wall Street by ending the abuses that helped create the current economic crisis.  In 1999, Congressman Dingell warned that by de-regulating the financial services industry, the banks would be “too big to fail.”  The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act allows the government to shut down “too big to fail” financial firms before risky and irresponsible behavior threatens to bring down the entire economy.  The legislation sets up a new watchdog – the Consumer Financial Protection Agency – to protect families and small businesses by ensuring that bank loans, mortgages, and credit cards are fair, affordable, understandable, and transparent.   The legislation also ends predatory lending practices that occurred during the subprime lending frenzy and ends taxpayer bailouts with new procedures to unwind failing companies that pose the greatest risk – paid for by the financial industry and not the taxpayers.

Congressman Dingell was an original co-sponsor of the “Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which President Obama signed into law, which cracks down on credit card companies.  Additionally, Congressman Dingell fought for the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act which allows mortgages to be modified by homeowners struggling to make their monthly mortgage payment.