Transcript: The Treasury’s Blistering Attack on Chamber of Commerce

Now this sounds more like an administration that is dedicated to change business as usual. Let's see how successful they are at actually doing something about. Excerpts below. Complete transcript here:

Over the past two years, we have seen that the fate of Wall Street and the fate of Main Street are bound together. Responsible American businesses and families have paid a heavy price for the financial industry’s failures. Retirement accounts have been crushed, millions of jobs have been lost, and even today small businesses across the country are having trouble getting the credit they need to operate and grow.

Economists will conduct a complete autopsy of the crisis for years to come. But there should be no debate about one thing: a central cause of the financial crisis was a financial regulatory system decades out of date and riddled with gaps and loopholes.

So while we can have legitimate disagreements on the details of financial reform, there can be no disagreement that reform is necessary. And there should be no disagreement that reform is long, long overdue.

That is why it is so puzzling that, despite the urgent and undeniable need for reform, the Chamber of Commerce has launched a $3 million advertising campaign against it. That campaign is not designed to improve the House and Senate bills. It is designed to defeat them. It is designed to delay reform until the memory of the crisis fades and the political will for change dies out.

The Chamber’s campaign comes on top of the $1.4 million per day already being spent on lobbying and campaign contributions by big banks and Wall Street financial firms. There are four financial lobbyists for every member of Congress.

All told, it is one of the most expensive special interest campaigns in history.