State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today called on Congress to restore states’ authority to fight predatory lending and form a new federal-state partnership against subprime mortgage abuses.
Blumenthal testified in Washington, D.C., before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
The attorney general spoke in support of a bill to empower the Federal Trade Commission to regulate subprime loans marketing and delegate enforcement authority to the states. Blumenthal called the measure “a good first step” in restoring authority the Bush administration stripped from the states and cracking down on subprime abuses.
“This ongoing, deepening crisis creates an opportunity — indeed an obligation — for a new aggressive, innovative effort to fight fraud and protect consumers,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “There must be a new federal/state consumer protection partnership — really a renewed and reinvigorated alliance and enforcement paradigm. States have been shackled and subverted by federal preemption — an arrogant assumption of exclusive power that all too commonly replaces state enforcement with federal inaction.”
