times you've been here, and i congratulate you on your fine record so far. i look forward to your testimony and hearing about the plans for the future. to work for safety and soundness and the protection of our consumers. thank you. >> mr. hensarling is recognized for two and a half minutes? finish -- the problem was the senate was not in recess at the time. in fact, the in pro forma session. the senate has the constitutional authority to determine the rules of its proceedings, not the president. under a similar set of circumstances in 2007 when inconveniently for democrat senate majority leader harry reid a republican was in the white house, he was quoted as saying, quote, the senate will

be coming in for pro forma sessions to prevent recess appointments. now, one may not like the policy, but it's a pretty convincing confirmation that a pro forma session is not a recess. so it's fairly clear the senate did not believe that they were in recess on january 4th, and under the constitution they could not have been in recess because the house did not consent. therefore, there can be no recess appointment. but had there been a recess appointment, this doesn't solve the president's problem. section 1066 of title x of dodd-frank clearly states that the director must be, quote, confirmed by the senate. a recess appointment is not a senate confirmation. in 2005 then-senator barack obama indicated recess appointees lose credibility because they cannot make it through the confirmation process.

now, mr. cordray, we just met for the first time about 15 minutes ago, and although we don't know each other, those who i know from ohio say you enjoy a good professional reputation. they respect you, they respect your judgment and your fairness, so this is not personal. but in my humble opinion, i believe you sit before us as either an unconstitutional appointee, an unlawful appointee -- and using the president's characterization -- you suffer from a loss of credibility from the outset. so for as ever long as you may occupy this office, you have been given an incredibly, incredibly important charge to protect consumers. but you've also been granted unprecedented, unaccountable, unilateral powers to ban and ration consumer credit products, restrict the fundamental economic freedoms of our citizens and effectively control huge swaths of our economy. so, obviously, i look forward to hearing your views. yield back the balance of my

time. >> thank you. mr. green is recognized for three minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i thank the ranking member as well. mr. director, i thank you for appearing today. and i'm excited about some of the things that are happening, especially this service members' affairs programming that you're working on. i think this is an initiative that all of us will be proud of, helping our service members, which is a opportunity for me to extend a word of gratitude to all of the members of the committee for helping with the homes for heros initiative that we passed, the legislation. and my colleague, mr. hensarling, yesterday gave an education presentation of -- expression of appreciation, and i thank him for using a little bit of his time to give his expressions. i did not mention mr. grimm when i talked about this other initiative, the home for heros, and this is not something that you're associated with, but mr. grimm was the co-sponsor,

and i want to make sure that i mention him. with reference to your appearance today, you also have an office for older americans that i think is important. i understand that mr. skip humphries is the person who will lead this agency or office, and i'm eager the hear more about this. i have some of the accomplishments. you've been there a short time, but your list of accomplishments has become very impressive over a very short period of time. this test pilot program, know before you owe, i think that's something that the consumers with credit cards will be excited about. you've initiated an examination into the student loan debt. i think it's something that college kids especially are going to be excited about. you have an ask the cfpb q&a opportunity for members of the

public so that they can increase their financial literacy. you've initiated an overdraft expiration program, and you're going to look at the harmful effects on consumers. you've created a first-of-its-kind program, a database, to, for repeat offenders against military roam, and this is to combat the fraud that targets our veterans and their families. i think it's an important program as well. there are many others that you have initiated, and i'm looking forward to working with you. i do want to just call to your attention something i think is important to you. a lot of the small banks are still having a good deal of consternation, and i look forward to working with you so that we might do some things to allay their concerns. i'm confident that there are ways by which we can make sure that they have a greater understanding of what we're attempting to do with this

agency. so i thank you for being here today. i'm eager to hear more from you, and i yield back the balance of my time. >> ms. cap toe for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to welcome mr. cordray from a neighboring state of ohio to this morning's hearing which is the first statutorily-mandated hearing to discuss the cfpb and discuss the report. a little over a year ago professor warren visited my office to update me on the progress of standing up the cfpb. she said at the time that the cfpb provided an opportunity to knock down the silos that existed between federal financial regula toition agencies and to provide clarity and consumer supervision. unfortunately, from all of the interviews and testimony that we received, this is not, this is not what is occurring, and i

fear that the cfpb has just created a new silo. although the prudential regulators transferred some personnel to the cfpb, some of these agencies have not eliminated fte positions, and be they were not transferred. so rather than using this opportunity to insure there's no duplication among the agencies, we've just added another bureaucracy to the equation. it is my hope, mr. cordray, that you and your team will be judicious going forward and work with the prudential regulators to eliminate these positions. it does add an unnecessary and added burden, i think, to particularly the community banks as they're moving forward trying to unlock and create jobs, um, and get lending in small businesses going again. i do have questions like my colleague there texas on the nature of the appointment of mr. cordray as the director. i do believe it could lead to some legal challenges of the

cfpb actions and create some more ambiguity, so i hope this becomes more clarified. but i would like to thank you for appearing before the committee, and i look forward to your testimony. >> ranking member waters, recognized for a minute and a half. two minutes. minute and a half. >> thank you. mr. chairman, i thank you for should -- holding this hearing this morning, and, director cordray, i'm pleased you have the opportunity to testify before our committee. in fact, we've been seeing a lot of you. as i understand it, you've been before the congress five times since you were appointed cfpb director in january. that's once every few week, and that's not to mention all the other employees of cfpb have come up to congress to testify. your agency has been before congress 16 times over the shout

course of its life. it's clear that this agency is setting the gold standard in terms of transparency and accountability. the cfpb has gone out of it way to solicit public and industry feedback on mortgage disclosure forms as well as the student loan disclosure sheet. moreover, the cfpb is governed by budget caps, vetoed by the financial stability oversight council and an annual gao audit to name just a few provisions to its bureau is uniquely subject to. so i'm please today hear from you, what's included in your semiannual report to congress and your plans for what you'll undertake in the coming months. thank you, and i yield the balance of my time for the gentleman of chicago to add to his minute and a half, hopefully, two minutes. >> you will reserve ten seconds -- [laughter] mr. royce?

>> thank you, mr. chairman. we've expressed our concern from time to time about this arrangement, but this legislation that set up the cfpb is going to add to the regulatory costs that are growing at a rapid clip. it has few checks and balances but broad, largely-undefined authority. and, here's the main point, it separates safety and soundness regulation from consumer protection regulation. prior to her departure, sheila bair had this to say about this problem. she said banking agencies' assessments of risks to consumers are closely linked with and informed by a broader understanding of other risks in financial institutions. placing consumer protection policy-setting activities in a separate organization apart from existing expertise and examines infrastructure could ultimately result in less effective protections for the consumer. so if we're not able to mandate

coordination between the cfpb and the prudential regulators through changes in law, my hope is that this semiannual hearing before congress can at least serve for a platform, for a discussion of the key concern that so many prudential regulators have on this issue and which we by past experience have learned the hard way is a big problem with bifurcated regulation. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. mr. baca is recognized for a minute and saw 15 seconds -- and 15 seconds. >> thank you very much, mr. chair and ranking member. i also want to thank mr. cordray for being here today. one of the biggest accomplishments contained in the dodd-frank act was the creation of the consumer financial protection bureau. finally, i say finally, we have a cop on the beat whose sole purpose is to insure that the american consumers are getting a fair shake in the marketplace. in the past four years, it's been dominated by efforts to

clean up the mess created by the previous structure which left enforcement and regulation based solely on financial industries' bottom line. if we are to accept the notion that the financial sector was created and exists and depends on the activity of the american consumer, well, then i think it's imperative that we do all that we can do to protect the well being of the american consumer. in just a few short months since mr. cordray took his post, the cfpb has taken a number of issues including know before you own which is great. that's a program and insuring that consumers know what they are getting into with mortgages, student loans or credit cards. i hope that this good work will continue, and i hope that we can discuss the next steps that we can do to work with cfpb to insure accountability and transparency, but at the same time as ed royce indicated, we need mandates. but remember that we need

mandates with funding as well. you can't just have a mandate without giving you the additional fundings to make sure that we have the accountability and the transparency. that has to come hand in hand together, and i look forward to your testimony. thank you very much. >> thank you. ms. biggert for one minute. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and welcome, director cordray. i would like to echo a number of concerns expressed by my colleagues on this side of the aisle. i'm particularly concerned about reports that the cfpb is engaging in regulatory activity that could jeopardize the safety and soundness of financial institutions. i'm also concerned about attempts to regulate forced-placed insurance and, finally, i'm today -- told that the simplified mortgage disclosures that the cfpb is developing may, in fact, be more complicated than previous disclosures. i welcome your comments on these matters and thank you very much for being here and yield back.

>> all right. two minutes and 15 seconds. >> thank you, mr. chairman, appreciate that. first of all, welcome. and secondly, i'd love to see how we went from seven pages to three pages and made more complicated. because that's what we've done in terms of disclosures of transactions and key terms and something easier to understand, i agree. i know you're currently testing the document, and i congratulate you. i think that's what we should be doing. but maybe, never know, democrats -- i'm sorry, you're not partisan, probably just appointed by a democratic president. maybe we did find a way to take seven pages and reduce it to three and make it more complicated. but i want to tell you that credit card companies, you've got to stay on top of them. they're getting trickier and trickier every day. in the terms of trying to figure out how it is that hoodwink the american public. and student debt, i think,

should be a nonpartisan issue. $1 trillion, more than all the credit card debt in america, and that's the youth. those are the -- they're not going to be able to buy a home of we have to figure out a way to make sure as they engage in student debt that they're not getting ripped off also and that the terms and the agreements are such that are going to let the next generation of great americans, our children, to be -- [inaudible] so i'm happy you're looking into that. and you've done so many things, and i'd like to say that, you know, you've been, i think -- it's been five times, you know, you've had the job a short time, five times, let me see, that would make like 16 times since last year. it looks like we're going to get to -- do you know what the best thing about you? is that people just want to see you on capitol hill. and i gotta tell you, every time one of those bankers comes knocking on my door, i say we're going to talk about this. i think next year at halloween they're going to have, like, the cordray costume for all the

bankers and all the things because you're just a scary man when it comes to them. but you know what? i don't think that's so bad. i think they need to have a little bit of the fear of the lord in them as they move forward. and lastly, we've got to stay on top of them. because last week i opened up my account, and i said, oh -- [speaking spanish] i keep, you know, $250 because that's the minimum for their savings account so they won't charge you every month, they raised it to 500 and charged me four bucks. they're continuing to do these little tricky, tricky things. they continue to put their hands in consumers' pocket. keep up the good work, thank you. >> thank you. i've joined with you, we'll get a cope right on a richard -- copy right on a richard cordray halloween outfit. [laughter] mr. miller for one minute. >> thank you. mortgage origination must be implemented with considerable care and caution.

cfpb has been quite active in this area working on the ability to repay regulations for residential mortgage loans, working on disclosure requirements and working on new requirements for mortgage origination. but t not well crafted. these rules will harm, not help consumers by driving up costs and limiting excess to mortgage credit. we've already seen the rule implemented in the name of consumer protection, consumer access to lower cost loans. some cases rules set in the name of consumer protection have prevented bars from closing on their own purchases because of discrepancy at the closing table. there are rules that force mortgage originators to offer loans where consumers ultimately pay more. while we must protect the consumer, we must seek cost -- we must make sure that cost to increase in the name of consumer protections are not implemented. we must not inappropriately restrict liquidity. i hope you'll address the ways you make sure excess to credit

and consumer closing costs will not increase or form late that these new rules are done properly. i yield back. >> thank you. mr. carney for one minute. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you for having this hearing today and thank director cordray for coming in again. it's good to see you. my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are concerned about how you were appointed, i'm just happy that you were appointed, that we have a good man directing this agency, doing a difficult job at a very challenging and important time. i look forward to following up on the conversations that we've had that we started in my office when you were the enforcement director, i think, at the time about nonbank lending, payroll -- payday balloon making, short-term lending and in particular practices on the online lending environment. appreciate the fact that you've had field hearings on this issue in alabama and look forward to continuing our conversation on that. thanks again for the great work

that you're doing, look forward to our o conversation today. >> mr. doe? >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i am -- >> for one minute, i'm sorry. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and i am one of those on the other side that am concerned about, you know, how the appointment was made, and i think that just goes down to the basic structure of the law. we all know there's an ongoing discussion about the cfpb's organizational structure. it's also a big concern that i have. should the cfpb structure be the same structure that the house, under democrat control, passed in the 111th congress which is also the structure that we've been advocating in this committee during this congress? or should the cfpb structure remain as it is today with few checks and balances, i believe, for the american public? now, while the structure discussion continues, i think that we all should be able to agree on some fundamental principles. first, strong consumer protection is important, necessary and food for consumers and private sector businesses.

second, the cfpb's rulemaking and other processes should be constructive and transparent while thoroughly and objectively considering all viewpoints from interested parties. third, regulations that stifle legitimate product availability, innovation, competition and growth would be inefficient and ineffective while unnecessarily harming consumers, employment and our economy. as we move forward, i hope that the cfpb and congress will use common ground as a basis for analyzing existing and future proposals. mr. cordray, i appreciate your time and being here today. >> thank you. mr. frank for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. cordray, welcome to one of the most longest-running series in washington, the hearings on oversight in this which my colleagues complain there is no oversight. i look forward to the reruns going forward. one reason they complain about there not being oversight at an oversight hearing and about the structure is that they have nothing firm to complain about. the agency has been in complins

now for a considerable period of time, and there are no problems. none of the horrors and abuses that we were threatened were going to happen have happened. so in the absence of that, let me talk about an important issue which was our addiction of the word "abusive" to the practices you were to protect people against. people have said, what do you mean by abusive? well, we defined it in the statute to say it is abusive, interferes with the ability of a consumer to understand or determine a condition or takes unreasonable advantage of the lack of understanding on the part of the consumer the risks, costs and conditions, the inability of the consumer to protect the interest. in other words, it may depend on the consumer. and if people think that's some far-fetched notion, remember that one of the problems we had with the subprime loans when you go to an 80-year-old and urge her to refinance when she's nearly paid off her mortgage, refinancing for some people might be a good idea. when it's sold to an

80-year-old, it's probably not such a good idea. and there are people who said, well, why are you getting involved in ignorance? i quoted before, and i misplaced the book, i wish i had the book of a very distinguished economist who said of course there needs to be a capacity in the government to protect people not just against deception and not just against unfairness, but against people who would take advantage of their ignorance. that's what abusive does. and we in acting in that and in giving you the authority to protect people against abuse so defined, we are following the instruction of that particular economist whose name is friedrich hayek. and i urge my colleagues who quote hayek more than they read it to look specifically as what he said, and there will be great support for dealing with efforts to exploit the individual. thank you, mr. chairman.

>> thank you, mr. chairman. this week just across the street from the capitol we've been reminded about the constitutional limits of our federal government. as the president's health care law appears to be in many serious jeopardy. unfortunately, i believe it won't be very long before matters involving the cfpb end up in the very same place. we must be ever so mindful today that president obama gave a recess appointment to mr. cordray despite the fact that the senate was in session at the time, a black and white matter despite the administration's spin that there is some gray there. this political maneuver by the president has set up a constitutional crisis at a time of already-heightened uncertainty in our economy. in other words, at a time when

we can least afford it. with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you. mr. garrett will close out the opening statements, and we'll go vote, come back as soon as we can. so i'd encourage the members to make your way to the floor. >> with your indulgence, i have another committee i have to go testify at, so i won't be back right away. it is not a sign of my lack of interest in the oversight of this agency. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> um, mr. garrett? one minute. >> thank you. mr. cordray, the fact that you are here today is quite troubling and yet another display that this administration's arrogance and flay grant disregard to the constitution. the only check of dodd-frank is the position of director requires senate confirmation and this president ignored it. the only way he gets around the process is to allow the power to fill vacancies that may allow during recess. but this constitutional authority depends on the senate being in recess. i suppose this president is an

impatient man, but instead of waiting for a constitutionally-significant recess of at least three days, this president declared the senate in recess, and this was a unilateral infringement on the constitutional powers of the institution to determine for itself when it was in recess. it's not here to provide an escape hatch if for this president when he wants to avoid the senate confirmation process. history tells us this. the founding fathers said so. nothing more than a supplement for the purpose of establishing an auxillary method in case the general method was inadequate. this position was illegitimately occupied and has not only been granted broad powers that will effect almost every aspect of american business, it's also been insulated from oversight. i say all that, mr. cordray, with nothing ill against you personally, but as a member of congress who has sworn an oath to support and defend the constitution, i find that the method in which you were appointed extremely offensive

and a violation of the highest law of this land, the constitution of the united states. with that, i yield back. >> thank you. at this time we'll stand in a brief recess. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> mr. corps cordray -- cordray, the committee will come to order. are we ready to proceed? you're recognized for a five-minnesota opening statement -- five-minute opening statement, and if you wish to go over, that won't be a problem. we won't be interrupting you. >> okay. thank you, mr. chairman. ranking member frank, members of the committee, i want to thank you for this opportunity to testify on the first semiannual report of the consumer financial protection bureau detailing the bureau's accomplishments in its first six months. in january i presented this information to your colleagues in the senate, and i look forward to presenting it to you today. before i became director, i promised members of congress in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle that i would be accountable to you for how the consumer bureau carries out the

laws you enact. i said that i would always welcome your thoughts about our work, and i stand by that commitment. i'm pleased to be here with you today to tell you about our work and to answer your questions. the people who work at the consumer bureau are always happy to discuss our work with the congress. this is the 15th time, maybe the 16th time i learned this morning, that we've testified before either the house or the senate. and my colleagues and i look forward to working closely with you, with the businesses who serve their customers in the consumer finance markets and with the millions of american consumers themselves. i'm honored to serve as the first director of this new consumer bureau. i'm energized and inspired by the many talented people who work at the cfpb, and i'm driven by the challenges and responsibilities of our mission to protect american consumers. our mission is of critical importance to making life better for americans. consumer finance is a big part of all of our lives. mortgages allow people to buy a

home and spread the payments over many years. student loans give young people with talent and ambition access to an education. credit cards give us immediate and convenient access to money when we need it. these products enable people to achieve their dreams, but as we've all seen in if recent years, they can also create dangers and pitfalls if they're misused or not properly understood. during my years in state and local government, i became deeply engaged in consumer finance issues. i saw good people struggling with debt they could not afford. sometimes those people had made bad decisions they came to regret. sometimes an unexpected event like a loved one getting sick or a family member losing a job overwhelmed even their most careful planning. still other times i saw unscrupulous businesses who obscured the terms of loans or engaged in outright fraud causing substantial harm to unsuspecting consumers and even

ruining their lives and devastating their communities. i'm certain that each one of you hears every day from your friends, your neighbors, constituents in your district who have these kinds of stories to tell. these people do not want or expect any special favors. they just ask for a fair shake and a chance to get back on track toward the american dream. one of our primary objectives at the consumer bureau is to make sure that the costs and risks of these financial products are made clear. people can make their own decisions, and nobody can or should try to do that for them. ..

under the laws enacted by you, the congress, with a director now in place, we have the ability to make sure this is true across all financial products and services. the consumer bureau will also make clear that violating the law has consequences. through our field examiners, our direct contact with consumers and business, and our highly skilled researchers, we have multiple tales to know the facts about what is happening in the marketplace. we plan to use all of the tools available to us to ensure that everyone respects and follows the rules of the road. where we can go operate with financial institutions to do that, we will. when necessary, however, we will not hesitate to use enforcement actions to right a wrong. as we move forward with our work, we need your directly from

the consumers we protect and the businesses who serve them. we do this on our website, consumer finance.gov, where consumers are able to tell us their personal stories. we also make it a point to get out of washington regularly and hear from people first and. thus far we've held town hall meetings in philadelphia, minneapolis, cleveland, and new york city. we have held a field hearing in birmingham, alabama. we are hearing from thousands of them americans about what works and what does not. we are listening closely, and we hope that many of you will join us at these events when they come to your communities. accomplishing our mission will take time. but as you can see from our semiannual report, we already taking important steps to improve the lives of consumers. thank you. i look forward to answering your questions. >> thank you, director. director, you probably heard ranking member frank talk about the abuses being a new term but

he said it was defined in the act. that's been a lot of focus by both sides on how, what is abusive, how that would be determined by your agency, and also by the lender, how they would know whether it was abusive or not. i'm looking at the definition of abusive, and one of the things says takes on double advantage of a lack of understanding on the part of the consumer. now, whether they understood something or not, would that not depend on maybe their ability to think and understand and reason? i mean, to a certain extent would that be based on their what we call common sense or iq?

>> so i think that prong of the abusive definition is, in fact, situational and somewhat subjective. i think some of the problems of the definition that congress enacted in which, of course, is a lot that we must follow and carry out are firmer and some of them are a bit less firm. so we have been trying to fumble through exactly how that pre-straight forward, you know, and very explicit definition of the term that is in the law, it is law that we're supposed to enforce, should be applied in the facts and circumstances of individual situations and that's something that we're just trying to assess very carefully as we go. >> in fact it is almost, you would almost have to go situation by situation, which are not? >> with some of the trent lott i think that may be more true with others, yes. >> that could be a problem for an institution or a lender, and the same agreement in some cases

depending on just the ability of the consumer to understand or focus on the agreement could determine whether it is abusive or not. for instance, under the definition and under the law, a financial institution could be liable any time a consumer simply doesn't understand a product or service. is that not correct? >> no, i don't think that's quite what the losses. i mean, it does speak of taking unreasonable advantage of the consumer. >> of their lack of understanding. >> that's right. so for an institution is there any situation they should be thinking carefully about whether they're taking unreasonable advantage of the consumer, and i think you often have a pretty good sense of what you're doing that or not. maybe not always.

and if so you should hesitate and think again. and be careful that you're treating your customers fairly. i think with some good business think about every day. >> there was an article in american banker that talked about an interview with you in which you indicated you didn't anticipate the agency writing a rule around -- you ask any follow-up questions whether your statement meant that people will mostly have to look at your actions as a model for how the new term abuse is defined. and your reporter to respond, i think that's probably right. was that a correct reporting of your response? >> it was. >> okay. does that mean that you're going to sort use your enforcement authority rather than a rulemaking authority to set the

standard on what is abusive? >> i think it meant several things. number one, it meant that for us to define what the abusive means feels a little presumptive, given that congress defined what a abusive means. our job is to that what congress has given us as a law that binds us, not to make up the law ourselves. having said that, we have to go in and supervise institutions, so there is some guidance that we have provided around that set of terms, unfair deceptive and abusive acts or practices, and our examination manual which is public inevitable on our website and institutions have every opportunity to look carefully at that and to inquire with us and ask questions about anything that is unclear to them. but i do think that how the law that congress has defined applies in particular situations is something that we will have to measure and the facts and circumstances basis as ago. but congress defined it, not us.

and it's our job to try to apply it on its terms. >> you are acknowledging some difficulty with being able to at least write a rule and tell institutions when they would be and when they may not be violating the law, i think? >> no, i don't think so. i just don't think that's probably the preferred approach when congress has defined a term already. we could further define the term, but are we going to defined differently from what congress defined? i don't think so. we could perhaps clarify how it applies to particular facts and circumstances but i think we should take time with her rather than up and just hypothecate in about it at the beginning. so that's what we're going to try to do. we're trying to be careful here, measured and thoughtful. sometimes that means you don't have all the answers in the first instance. i think that's where we are. >> thank you. ms. waters? >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. mr. corker, the state and

federal mortgage services settlement unveiled in february set forth new mortgage services standards and address issues such as pre-foreclosure referral notices to bar was, third party provider oversight, loss mitigation requirements, single point of contact standards and other measures. however, settlement only covers five of our major mortgage services, and the service standards will only be in place for the life of the settlement. i don't know, i do have a lot on your plate, but does the cpb have any plans to develop permanent servicing standards that cover the entire services industry? if so, will cfpb use the servicing standards in the state-federal settlement as a template for whatever you develop? >> thank you, congresswoman, for the question. is a very timely question, and the answer is we do have intention of developing circumstances that would apply

across the industry. one of the things we want is for all servicers to be put on a level playing field it as you noted, the servicing settlement was a partial step. it was an important step forward but it is a partial step. it only applies to certain institutions, and only applies to certain loans in their portfolio. we are working with an interagency group, other federal agencies, to develop standards. that was true before the servicing settlement was reached. it remains true after the settlement was reached. there's no question that the provisions in the settlement, which were worked over very carefully on a federal state basis with those institutions, are going to be the basis for trying to provide broader guidance to the market. but as you know there are many servicers out that have not been touched by the settlement. they have not been affected anyway. some of the non-bank servicers have never been overseen by anyone. and we need to bring them under the umbrella so that everybody is playing by the same rules as quickly as possible. we will move forward on this. with certain mortgage servicing

rules which are required to adopt by january. we're looking at what else should be part of that and we're consulting closely with our fellow agencies. but we see that as a high priority. for me i some mortgage servicing problems in ohio going back to when it was a local treasure, then state treasurer, then state attorney general and now have found them to be national in scope. >> thank you very much. that's great. i really appreciate that. i've been following very closely the mortgage servicing consent on a process initiated by the occ and federal reserve board. for the five biggest, largest mortgage services. this process allows servicers to hire their own auditors to investigate their foreclosure practices during 2009, and 2010. we as -- why they didn't include his cpb in this process, and we didn't get a really good answer.

given cfpb's new jurisdiction over servicing, what do you think rex do you have a desire to be involved in this process? >> congresswoman, we are taking complaints now on our website, and then call some people and otherwise about mortgage issues, quite a few of those complaints deal with foreclosure situations and other servicing issues. i think the congress is well served on any kind of significant initiative like this, the occ has embarked on, to exert oversight just as you exert oversight over our efforts and processes. i think not to be kept in mind that the occ was the reverse of the federal agencies to step up and document the extent of the abuses in the mortgage servicing sector. they issue the first report on that. it demonstrate the seriousness as they saw it, so seriousness it affected the safety and soundness of institutions that allowed everyone to build and move forward toward the servicing settlement, and now as

you say it's very important for us to broaden that across the industry and make sure all these other processes are working as well as possible. it's a complicated space but the consumer bureau has very significant authority here both to examine institution, bank and non-bank, to enforce the law going forward, and to write rules and will do that very carefully and we're glad to consult with you as we go. >> thank you very much and w. back the balance of my time. >> thank you. mr. hensarling for questions, five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. i want to follow up on the line of questioning that our chairman, spencer bachus, had. i think what i heard you say with respect to the term abusive, was that if the law was clear in this area, but i thought also heard you say it was situational and subjected. i know that lee's the co-author of dodd-frank, senator dodd, during the senate debate on the creation of the act said on the senate floor quote, i have never

claimed our proposal on consumer protection is perfect to i acknowledged the word a abusive does need to be defined and we are talking about striking that are making it better. the language never changed after that. so number one, for the record i want to say at least a co-author of the act doesn't find it to clear. and i'm just wondering, is a clear or is it subjective, isn't clearly subjective, for those completing -- impede or complement returns? i don't understand your point if you. >> congressman, what i was saying, which is i think undeniable is this is not an undefined term in the law. some people have mistaken i said a abusive, it's me, it's not fun. congress explicitly defined the term. they laid out several specific prongs that would have to be defined spent but it is subject to? >> it is very expressly defined in the law. there are criteria that people are supposed to use in determining whether or not --

>> did you not earlier say it was subjective just a few minutes ago? >> what i said was, if you look at those prongs yet to be applied, common to many legal definitions that congress has adopted. and some of the prongs are situational to the individual consumer. i think that's true. >> can consumer product both be fair and abusive? >> i think congress has made a judgment. again, it's not for me to just make up terms and go forward on any basis i pleased that i'm supposed to enforce the law but you'll have enacted, and we intend to do that. >> case law surrounding greater statutory specificity with respect to unfair, and so the question is, is the term abusive redundant, or is this something that is completely separate? so the question can have both a fair product which is still yet

and abusive product? >> yes. >> so the answer is yes? >> i would be glad to answer your question. the answer to your question is congress has put together three different terms in that passage. they have talked about unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. congress has seemed to indicate that there is a distinction among each of those categories. that isn't to say there can't be some overlap. there may be significant overlap but i think the answer to your question is, congress has produced clue spoken and said there could be a practice that would not be unfair, but would be abusive. a lot of lawyers who are arguing back and forth trying to understand exactly the parameters of that and it may be sometime before anybody comes -- >> in interpreting the term abusive, you said it could be situational. is situational consumer specific? >> well, when -- >> could it be? >> the chairman asked me specifically about a particular prong, which was the consumers

understand. that seems unavoidably situational, meaning -- >> so a product could be abusive to one individual consumer, yet not abusive to another consumer, is this correct? >> i think the law seems to pretty clear to contemplate that, yes. then there's other prongs that is not necessarily true. spent if i'm a financial institution, if i'm the first state bank of texas and i want to roll out a product, in order to avoid litigation or enforcement action, and i going to foresee the day where i have to impose financial literacy tests on each and every one of my customers to avoid an enforcement action from the agency? >> now i think it may reflects the kind of careful practices and good businesses engage in all the time. to go back to the ranking member's comments, if you are offering a refinancing to an elderly customer that you know full well may be having some difficulty --

>> down to the individual consumer, correct? >> again, i think that businesses and good banks are mindful of this. they would not approach certain customers with certain products that they would approach -- >> mr. cordray, just one other quick question to you earlier said at one point, fraud is fraud but you've also been in the record to say quote, frankly there's a lot of fraud that is committed in the marketplace that is not on its face necessarily technical illegal. so is fraud fraud or is there legal fraud and illegal fraud, or the mere fact that her agency determines that you don't like the fraud and it becomes illegal? >> i appreciate you asking about that, and the subcommittee chair of a different committee asked me about the single. that was an unfortunate either misquote or perhaps out of context quote of my. i didn't mean to intend that something that is in compliance with the law would be illegal.

that's obviously not definitionally correct. but you can have fraudulent acts of practices that, you know, may or may not rise to an actual illegality, depends on whether there is materiality, whether israelites, whether there's damage. that's a standard that in securities law. but our job will be to protect consumers against fraud, against unfair deceptive acts and practices, and abuse to the extent that definition is relevant, and adds to the other definitions which remains kind of a matter under debate. >> thank you, mr. cordray. my time is up. >> ms. maloney for five minutes. >> thank you. director cordray, yesterday i read in one of the papers that you have a new feature on the cfpb website called ask us anything. i wanted to call it to the attention of my colleagues and others, because i believe that

financial literacy is something that i care deeply about, and i firmly believe that when people have the best information, they can make the best decisions for their financial lives. can you report on the usage of this function, and how will these questions and form your work going forward to? >> thank you, congresswoman. it's something that we think will be an important foundation that we build on going forward. so, as we prepared the bureau to receive and to handle and to resolve consumer complaints in the credit card area, and in the mortgage every and now we're into other areas as well, we inevitably developed training materials for our folks would be receiving those complaints to be able to address different questions, to be knowledgeable about the products they will be talking about and the like. and it occurred to us that rather than limited information only to our own employees who

would be dealing with these complaints, if we could put it out on our website and make it more available to the public at large, maybe they could answer a lot of questions for themselves. they could go to and get that information when it is most pertinent and convenient or them. we will continue to build on this. this will be an interactive process. people add questions that they would like to have us answer. they can offer their thoughts about the answers we are providing to the questions that are raised. we expect we will build is out across the whole range of products and services. we hope to become a trusted resource for people out in the marketplace who need to know more. they know they need to need more. they're not sure where to go get a. something so go to websites and other self-interested websites where someone is trying to sell them a product and, therefore, the information may be distorted by that self-interest. and we don't have any of that so we hope to promote this pic would be glad if you promote it among your constituents and

others as well. it is intended to muzzle of consumer so they can protect themselves. >> director cordray, most of us here, quite a few complaints from her constituents about student loans. in fact, recently it's been reported student loan debt reached 1 trillion, and that is even higher. it's hard to believe that credit card debt. i know that you have released a shopping sheet for student loan, so that parents and students can make a comparison about what the terms are. and what steps are you asking, are you taking to further educate students and parents about the merits and drawbacks of the various options they have in student loans? and are you including the deferred interest at all those other aspects of? >> so the good question, this is obviously a subject of growing importance to a number of americans, and should be for the

country as a whole, because as was mentioned earlier, the population we are talking about here, our young people have the ability to make something of themselves, the kind of young people we like to see rise toward success in our society. they are held back only by lacking the means. they need to be able to finance and education. this becomes a momentous decision for young person in the family. do they get on the right financial track order to get on the wrong financial track what if they end up on the wrong financial track they are not going to achieve what they could achieve. we will be deprived of their talents in our society, and you end up in a financial mess that will last them for years. it's one of the few very big decisions people will make in the course of their lives that has lasting repercussions, like the mortgage decision, like certain retirement decisions. we have the financial aid shopping sheet that you mention because we want to make the prices and risks and comparisons clear for young people and their families, you are not the money with this. they have not done before or maybe they've done it once.

they be they didn't get it right in either. we also have a student debt calculator so people can understand what their rights are. what the repayment alternatives may be so that once they're in situations of having significant student loan debt, they can best plan their path forward to getting out from under that debt. and relieving that cloud over their future. we are working closely with the department of education on initiatives around that. and i'm sure will have many more ideas as we go. there are a lot of areas of concern, holly petraeus who heads our servicemembers affairs office has indicated that the 90/10 rule for financial institutions create some perverse incentives for them to offer loans to students that they know full well are going to default at high levels because that gives them access to the 90% of federal funding, especially from the g.i. bill. i know it's something congress is turning to look at. we do urge you all to look carefully at this and what the

unintended consequences have been. we have many and people, some of whom served their country, and many others as well who need the opportunity to succeed, and they are foundry because of bad financial decisions. >> thank you. the gentle sleep time is expired. mr. miller for five minutes. >> i'm sure you were to address -- the safe act which wasn't a significant achievement of its time but it is being jeopardized, hearing reports of lenders bring their own loan origination staff, that was not our intent. this is inconsistent with the principles that we should be independent training these individuals for pre-license and education requires the mortgage training should be independent of the best regulatory to we have to ensure all loans are originated are licensed and qualified, and it's a three-part question that i will try to give you time to enter. do you share my concern about under training, their own personal? what you plan to do to address

this quick do you plan to include language to address this in cfpb's mortgage origination will? >> a few congressmen for the question. a thoughtful question, because i would agree with you that training your own staff, although i suppose can be cost effective, measure questions about whether that is sufficient and adequate to achieve what we want. and you can imagine that when you trained your own staff you might be, the training may be distorted by the financial self-interest of the organization which again i think is inconsistent with congressional intent. i will take that comment back. i will have my staff get back to you on how we see him what we're planning to do about it. the safe act as you know, a statue that did come over to us now to enforce, there are a number of questions that come up about it, including the chairman raise a question about is about transitional licensing, which is another new issue for us. but we will be glad to look at

the and think carefully about the. my sense is -- >> you plan on addressing it then? >> i will have my staff come back on that. >> in your testimony you say that the cpb will be proposing a new loan origination compensation rule within the next six months i believe you said. april of last year -- aims to protect consumers for months scruples practices which were all concerned about the. we think the provision went too far. while intended to prevent stealing the federal act causes consumers to pay more in the closing cost. because the federal has forced mortgage originators to only offer loans with a closing cost rolled into the loan. i introduced a bill that would ensure consumers have the ability to pay the closing costs up front if they so choose no matter how the mortgage company pay their employees. i don't think those two are connected. while federal rule is intended to protect consumers from mortgage averages that would try to overcharge buyers, it is

causing homebuyers to lose their homes and costs. this provision is narrowly tailored to protect borrowers from bad actors while still -- so borrowers from not closing their home. my concern is if there's a discrepancy to closing, that the originate cannot even modify their compensation to the benefit of the buyer, can you please tell me how you plan on addressing that? so it doesn't continue. >> okay, thank you, congressman. i want to be kind of careful in my response to that. that is an open pending rulemaking for us. we were, as you said, given the mortgage loan originator compensation rules that the federal reserve and acted, and finalized last year. but we were given authority under the law and, in fact,

required, do some work in that area as well i january of this coming year. this is an issue that we're looking at. there are other issues we're looking at, such as perhaps unintended affects on pension arrangements and compensation, bonus arranged, especially as some of the smaller institutions. we have a whole process on the. with comments we're digesting. we will be glad to speak for the wiki. i'm not sure how much publicly -- >> i'm sure you have seen situation we get ready to close, you pre-stated your costs up front. the rule applied doesn't allow any leeway at all in the. and you have had situations where everybody sits around the table and says well, this is occurring, we need this type of reduction, and many times mortgage originator will make those allowances rather than lose the closing. now they can't even do that. that's just, i mean, there's some bad actors out there that would raise costs at closing,

and the buyers at the last minute say i either do this or don't get my home, my bill doesn't do that it doesn't allow for the. but to modernize the closing and allow those people to roll those costs they have in the closing come into their loan rather than paying up front, if it's not in some way impacting in a negative what i think it's something you really need to look at. i am not anyway asking you to do something that puts the individual at risk due to some unscrupulous individual, but we need to allow some leeway on the part of the borrower a good. >> i hear you on the. we'll take that back, and i appreciate that. on its face it sounds very sensible i would have to say. >> thank you, sir. >> ms. velasquez for five minutes. >> in the small business committee we have heard a great deal of concern among merchants and retail businesses who fear that their financial transactions with other businesses could be subject to cfpb oversight.

what can you say to rest their worries that new regulation will affect purely commercial transactions? >> the authority that is given us under the law has to do with consumer financial products and services. and it's defined in the law to only really affect matters involving household credit used for personal purposes. you know, it is a broad array of products, mortgages, credit cards, student loans, payday loans. it goes on into debt collection, debt settlement, credit reporting in other areas, but we are not, contrary to views about the breadth of our authority we do not have authority over commercial transactions, transactions between businesses that don't involve credit to consumers. so i would simply reiterate that that's what our lot is, and

that's not within our purview. >> some policymakers have expressed concerns that the new bureau will extend its reach to include businesses that previously were not subject to a federal financial regulator, like factory firms or money service businesses. showed small businesses that previously didn't offer consumer financial products be concerned about a new layer of regulation? >> if a business does not offer consumer financial products or services, they would not be subject to our oversight. if they do, they would. so money service companies, previously were not subject to any federal oversight, argued that the army, there's some loss that may apply to them. they now are potentially subject to oversight by us. this is a big shift that allow represents, which is that there

are plenty of consumer markets where you have chartered institutions, banks, credit unions, thrifts competing against non-chartered institutions that were not subject to any oversight whatsoever, and we want to make sure that they are held to the same sorts of standards and principles, and people are put on a level with one another. that's a big part of our job, something we're going to be, a big challenge for us to do but we are working hard to do that as we go over the first few years of our existence. >> a single record for consumer financial protection, the federal regulators have nonetheless retained enforcement powers for the overwhelming majority of banks. it bears a risk that this will weaken protection for consumers or to lead to confusion for financial institutions? >> i don't know that there should be confusion.

i think for the vast majority of banks, as you indicated, and my understanding as well, they remain subject to the same regulators they have always had. for the 110 largest institutions, both with assets over $10 million, they will not be overseen by us for consumer protection purposes, and by the prudential regulator for safety and soundness purposes. so there is some overlap there, but for all of these reasons, it behooves us to collaborate closely with our fellow agencies, to make sure that we are approaching problems in common, to make sure we're on the same page, make sure we're consulting carefully and getting their perspective as we act, and we give them whatever perspective we may be developing as they act. that's something we're working toward, as my fellow heads of the agencies and among the staffs takes a little time for us to adjust to one another. >> if i may, i'm the ranking a small business committee. it's quite frustrating for me to time and time again, when we

have community banks coming before the committee to discuss why it is so difficult for them to continue to lend to small businesses. they are saying because of the dodd-frank regulation. and if they have assets of less than 10 million, those regulations and oversight will not have any direct impact on those communities, financial institutions. >> well, we won't be enforcing the law with respect to them. we won't be examining them, except possibly to ride along a story that we don't anticipate utilizing in the immediate future. regulations will affect them and that's why i have said time and again in front of his and other panels that we need to think carefully about what the effect of our regulations may be on smaller institutions. that's why we are utilizing the panel to make sure smokers have the ability to inform us directly about their concerns

and their operations and how they work. that's something we're taking very seriously. we have one and soon a couple more of those panels that work. and so we are listening carefully to them. i am creating an advisory council for can pashtun community banks so that their perspective does not get lost in the shuffle force but it's important for us, and i agree with you, we need them to be able to lend to small businesses because they great the vast majority of jobs in this country. and some of the encouraging in economic news seems to link to the fact that small businessman is up in small businesses are being created at a faster pace. that's a very good thing for us. >> a gentle woman's time is expected of a recognize myself or five minutes per question. in your report, you talk about streamlining regulations and the law code and quote is to address outdated, unnecessary and i'm

doing burdensome regular sugar the president talked about this in a state of being, how he wants to eliminate older antiquated regulations. i guess my question is what steps are you taking to work with them to eliminate these over burdensome or repetitive or inherited regulations? can you give me specific examples, et cetera don't want to hear about the one page mortgage, because the last time i asked a question i got a three minute and on one page mortgage. not from you, i will say that. we are all well aware of that, and that's a good thing. we are very happy about that. so if you could help me with that. the treasury secretary point to the cpb as one of the ways to eliminate these old regulation spent i appreciate the question that i have also been known to give some long answers from time to time, i'm trying to shorten the. on this though i was over to the u.s. chamber of commerce yesterday speaking with them, and one of the things that they

praised us for, and i think it's a very commonsense thing for us to do is, we have launched an initiative on streamlining of the regulations that we've inherited from other agencies. we didn't write those rules. we're not personally invested in them. they were adopted by different agencies at different times for different purposes. there's often not a lot of careful thought about the aggregate impact of those. so we have had a request for information outstanding and publish in the federal register for a couple of months now asking anyone to bring us their ideas about how we can cut back and streamline regulations, and show that we're a different sort of agency, that we're interested in doing this. and in the consumer realm we think there is room to do this because there's been such sort of mania for disclosure over the years that those disclosures piled up, piled up and became very dense, unreadable. consumers were driving very little value from them, confuse even if they did read them. and we think we can cut that

back in some areas great substantial but so this is something we're taking very serious. the chamber has given us some thoughtful comments, hundreds of others have as we'll. we'll be digesting those and we hope to walk the talk spent i would like to follow up with you on that as time goes on. if you look at it from a community bank perspective, you were having to divert the resources to a compliance officer or an accountant or an attorney to keep up with the vast majority of regulations, not just the new but the old as well. that diverts resources from the job creation or small business lending that we want to see our financial institutions do. the federal reserve and initially proposed a qualified mortgage rule before his transfer to the cfpb. it off are two different alternatives proposals. with a differing protections for liabilities for lenders. we have had a lot of discussion about this. one would give a total safe harbor and one would have a rebuttable presumption.

protections. which alternative would you prefer and with the cfpb drafty different proposals to? so again of want to be a little bit careful how answer this question. it is a pending rulemaking. we have been getting quite a bit of input, both from industry and from consumer groups, and also from our fellow agencies. as you know it was the fed who proposed the rule, and then it is come over to us to finalize. it's also very important role, because providing guard rails around lenders, paying attention to the borrower's ability to repay is something that is very important for cleaning up the mess we had in the mortgage market. what we have found as we've been working on this is you can have sort of a definitional safe harbor, a definition rebuttable presumption. if you leave the stand at stake and mushy, there's not a lot of difference between the two because you can still dedicate whether you comply with the qualifications to get into the

safe harbor. what's very important in this area though is that we try to create bright lines so the will not be a lot of litigation. we don't want this to be punted into the courts and people not to be sure for years to come. we will work to do that. we want to do this right. this also intersects with the qualified residential mortgage rule on risk retention that other agencies are going to be adopting. so we are taking a lot of close input from a lot of groups who have competing but in some ways converging perspectives on some of these issues. >> i would urge caution in this area suffered because as we know, to really get the economy moving again we've got to get the mortgage, we got to get this right. we've got to get first time home buyers into the market. we've got to get people to able to move in order to get our economy moving again so i would like to again follow up with you on the. my time has expired. i did want to ask you about the complete line and also wanted to

get into the silos, but i will say that for another day. our next person is mr. miller. >> thank you madam chair. i've been humbled by some of the complaints about the use of subjective terms in the statute, whether that will be, that will lead to results are just snatched out of thin air. of course, my understanding of my knowledge actually is a subjective terms are used throughout the law. to reach different, so the law applies differently in different circumstances. and that is, in fact, viewed -- there was 18th or 17th century english judge who wrote there shall be no fixed definition, and this is probably not exact quote, their show be no fixed definition of fraud, less dubious men contrive ways to evade. so a clarity, we all see the

value of clarity, but clarity can also lead to in flexibility. and the needs to be some subjective standards to reach new circumstances. reasonable man, the idea that reasonableness is somehow a new thing snatched out of the air to be applied to the law, is a very peculiar to the reasonable man standard it is not exactly the clearest standard, it obstacle in some circumstance. mr. cordray, do you think you will have any difficulty applying standards of fair, reasonable, fair, unfair, unreasonable or abusive? >> i think withstand is like that, congressman, there is a great area and then there is a core. and within the core, there's really no question that the people are perpetrating acts

that are within the core, they know that what they're doing is probably wrong and yet they do anyway. in the great area it's a little harder to judge and i think we should trade more cautiously in the gray area. but as you say, these are terms that have been defined over decades spent actually centuries. >> that's true, and it goes back to the, law in many instances. when they were codified into statutory law, there's still a lot of years of courts interpreting them for the. but some of them is very well plowed ground at this point. and i think that the main outlines of how people mistreat their customers are pretty well-defined. when they see that that's happening or the sea that's very likely happening, they should be, they should be hesitating. they should be rethinking. and i think that's entirely appropriate. >> you said there are gray areas and core areas to give enforcement powers and give

regulatory powers. integrate areas which are probably proceed straight to enforce our which you probably turn to rulemaking and apply that rule prospectively so everyone would know what the rules were? >> i think that they could be situations where we might do either. but i also think that there's enough misconduct that occurs in the core areas that would be well served to focus on that at the outset in the first period of our bureau. we want to get that cleaned up, then we can work on trying to define around the edges a little more clearly. >> okay. there also have been concerns today and in the past about whether your rules, the prohibitions are unfair, unfair and deceptive and abusive practices would threaten the solvency of the financial system for financial institutions. the legislation as first

proposed by administration include a requirement that a plain vanilla product be offered side-by-side with any other, any of the products offered by a financial institution. and that was shot down. there were deals of protests. and the law, the sentence or two plays in the law but there's no requirement to offer any given financial product. so it is only your authority then to prohibit unfair practices, right? you are not allowed to require any financial institution to offer a product that might be unprofitable? >> well, one of the mandates in the law is that we're supposed to promote innovation in financial services, which means let a thousand flowers bloom as long as they are not beyond exploiting for treating their

customers unfairly, or being deceptive. we do want there to be innovation and vigorous competition in the financial realm. there will be times when an array of choices is better for consumers. there may be times where, for example, in the mortgage market and the lead up to the financial crisis where there were a lot of exotic products being offered to customers where they were a very poor fit, and the default rates show that very quickly. so it's something we will have to carefully think about as ago, but again, in general we want to encourage innovation and want to encourage competition. but we wanted to be fair competition and we want it to be competition that respects the consumer. >> the gentleman's time is expired. mr. posey for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. good to see you again, mr. cordray. when you were here previously you stated, and he also told the

chairman earlier today, that you promise to be accountable and answerable to congress. and eager to work with congress, but apparently some of the people in your agency haven't got the memo yet. i have heard cases where, from another office, not mine, remains nameless only so, they have no need to fear any recognition, but our district is unable to close out certain cases that you refer to them because cfpb states it doesn't have to respond to them because it reports directly to the fed. and that was the second of this month. pursuit of that a little further when i saw, and i found a litany of unreturned phone calls and messages that they have. and so maybe there are some people that just need to be

briefed on your philosophy in the agency. spent i'm not entirely following your question. are you talking about a financial institution that feels that they couldn't get answers from our agency? >> congressional offices. >> okay. >> members of congress. >> that's very different from what i'm hearing, although we'll be happy to take of any particular situations that need to be attended to better. i've heard a lot of compliments from different congressional offices, both sides of the aisle, in terms of how we're handling consumer complaints. and we're beginning to see in our consumer complaint line lots of postmortems from consumers who are very pleased with the fact that -- >> don't want to spend a lot of time on this. >> i'm sure it is a mixed bag spent i'm sure it is. there is something called a victims relief fund, when your

agency hangs onto the money instead of returning it to the treasury. and they're supposed to be used to compensate victims of wrongful activity. there's no requirement that i can see that the penalty must be paid to the victims of a specific wrongdoing for which the penalty was collected. what happens to the money if the victim can't be located, or there's more money collected and it is through compensation? are you allowed to keep the money and co-mingle it with other agency funds? >> this is something we've been looking at carefully. it is a provision of the act, as you said. the first thing that happened in any matter of that sort is we are supposed to make a vigorous effort to find the victims who were wronged and make sure that they are recompensed as fully as possible. if there is a penalty that is possessed, that doesn't necessarily tied specifically to compensation, but if we can

compensate victims, that's our first priority. if not, the law provides that that money can be used to facilitate and aid financial literacy and education efforts around the country for consumers to so that's a possible disposition of funds as well. beyond that i think we're trying to be mindful in just getting out the law as congress enacted it and that's what it seems to say to us. >> would you anticipate being involved in settlement of? >> human settlements that don't go to a final court resolution of? >> yes, sir. >> i would imagine that will happen frequently, just as it does for every government agency and every private litigants as well. >> but you don't anticipate that money would just be unbudgeted revenue to the agency, that that money would be transparent and it would be going to victims or

to education as you indicated? >> i see what you are saying. when we arrive at a settlement, i think it will typically be our practice to enter the settlement agreement in the accord as a consent decree which creates more enforceability and more transparency. and then the nature of that document is that the court will specify in the court order how any funds are to be allocated and how they are to be used, and that creates binding law that we have to follow. so that's what i would expect would typically be the case in our matters that don't go to some final judgment in the court. >> that's what i wanted to be. thank you very much. i yield back, madam chair. >> thank you. mr. scott for five minutes. >> thank you very much, madam chairwoman. mr. cordray, how long have you

been now on the job? >> i've been on the job for three months minus five days. >> three months. and could you tell the committee would areas have jumped out to raise the greatest number of complaints, the greatest areas of concern, if you had to prioritize on where there is the greatest area of problem in the use of private lending in carrying out your mission, what would that be? would be mortgage services? would be student loans, credit cards? what would it be? >> it's a little hard to determine trends yet, because it's been a short time and we have been receiving complaints in stages. but i think there's very little question that the pace of complaints has been fastest in the mortgage areas are. especially around foreclosures and around service or practices

and the frustration that people feel. in fact, my guess would be the complaints we are receiving -- because i think most of these problems are pretty common nationally. we've also received a lot of complaints around credit cards, typically for smaller dollar issues, but still very frustrating to people. and we have begun receiving complaints about student loans, and we expect will have a significant volume of those, and others spinning i'm glad that you volunteered that answer, the priority of areas of concerns and complaints have been in the mortgage area. and i commend you, i think gender 20th of 2012 you put out in your annual report a greater emphasis on dealing with the mortgage service area. certainly commend you on that.

let me ask you how your bureau responds to developments that happen that may be a little outside the mortgage area. for example, recently during this period, i think about a few months ago, there was a settlement made, of billions and billions of dollars, apportioned out to the states. that was designed to go back to help struggling homeowners with their mortgages. one of the major areas of concerns, difficulty with mortgage holders is having the ability to write down the principal. we've been after that for a long time. the secretary of treasury was before the committee last week, and i asked him pointedly about that, could that money be used to assist homeowners in the greatest area of need in terms of lowering the cost of their monthly payment, writing down the principal. and he said just. you're aware of this, are you

not? >> yes. >> so how are you getting this information out to mortgage holders, do are very confused, do not understand? are you working to get out to each of the states, communities, how the mortgage folks, the mortgage holders are struggling can take advantage of this? for example, my state of georgia share in this, $815 million. one of the concerns we have had, for example, is that the governor of georgia has decided that 110 million of this would not be used. the funds will be diverted, wouldn't go to the struggling homeowners. what i'm try to get at, it seems like something like this where we are really talking about

consumer protection, some areas where you guys ought to weigh in on as well. what has been your response? how do you get information out? where is there a clear understanding of how this money can get into the hands of the consumer to help them for what it was designed to do? get down that principle and help these people save their homes, and that these states can not just willy-nilly use this money for a rainy day fund or whatever. and that's a problem. how are you all helping us with that? >> well, the mortgage servicing settlement was organized around the principal that there were significant money that was allocated on a state-by-state basis, and state attorneys general would have significant say in whether that was used, for example, for homeowner counseling or for raising the advantage housing in cities, or

a number of other uses. there's also money in the settlement though that is not subject to control at the state level that will go toward homeowner relief, some of which will be in the form of principle write-downs. others which will take different forms. principle write-downs are one tool in the toolbox of addressing an upside down mortgage situation, and -- >> i know my time is short, but could you just as quickly what your bureau is doing to get this vital information out to the consumer? >> if you could do this quickly because i want to get one more question are in before we have to go. >> that's fine. we're working with these other agencies that reach the settlement which were not integral to to make sure that we helped publicize what is available to homeowners, but i think the lion's share of that is falling on the backs of the state attorneys general, the hud secretary and the justice and perhaps treasury of how

departments. >> mr. luetkemeyer for five mins but might intention is after mr. luetkemeyer, is to put us on recess and come back. we have two votes. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. cordray, in reading your report, i noticed in your when you are filling out the positions are filling you a breakdown of all different groups that you are hiring. there's nothing in there that indicates the breakout of people who actually have some real-world experience with with regards to financial services. can you tell me, are you hiring people have real-world experience that action worked in a bank or at a credit union, or some sort of a lone place that no unintended consequences of a rule or a law that was proposed by you and enforcement of our office together to? congressman, it's a good question. it would be a pretty poor performance i'm if the question is no, we are not. in fact, we are. we have a number of people have come to the bureau.

i'm pleased to say who have come not from other federal agencies or not from state government or not from the public sector at all, but from private sector entities. .. >> i've heard quite a bit about him. >> okay. they're trying to recommend him, i believe, for a position with your agency. are you considering that at all? >> that's news to me, sir.

>> okay. i was just curious. the reason i ask is because he's been rather outspoken with regards to his opinion of oversight with regards to the financial services industry. in fact, in 2010 at duke university school of business he made a statement that says we've hired 50 lawyers, ph.d.s and mbas to basically terrorize the financial services industry. that gives me great pause whenever somebody like that is being recommended to your agency. if they have the attitude going in that they're there to terrorize the industry that they have oversight over, what's your reaction to that quote? >> i don't have any particular reaction. i'm not familiar with the quote. >> does this sound like somebody you'd be interested in hiring? >> with everybody we think about hiring, we would want to look at the full picture, we want a range of view points, but, look, we're looking for responsible,

balanced perspectives on the problems we're facing and, frankly, whether we hire someone or not -- and, again, this particular situation that you raise is news to me -- we're getting input on broad basis from people who have a lot of different perspectives, some of whom dislike the banks, some of whom love the banks, and we want to get all that perspective and filter that in as we figure out how to proceed on some of these hard issues. >> you made in your opening testimony the comment that you believe everybody needs even-handed oversight. and i think if you're true to your words there, i would think mr. ekek would have trouble gaining employment with your agency. >> again, i think the premise of the question is mistaken, but -- >> another question for you. with regards to, basically, you've got rulemaking authority as well as enforcement authority, and with regards to rulemaking, do you do any cost benefit analysis on any of the rules that you propose? >> we make strenuous efforts as

our statute tells us to assess the benefits, costs and impacts of each and every rule we would consider adopting, yes. >> is that information public? is that something we can get our hands on if -- >> it is part of every rulemaking, and it is typically parished as -- published as part of the rulemaking, so i think there's nothing hidden about it, and it's something that courts will review carefully when they look at finished product by us. and so it's something that not only do we have every reason to do and do carefully, but also it makes common sense. so -- >> this is a, this is, for instance, a rule of thumb or maybe get your thought on it, you know, when you propose a rule and you get a cost benefit analysis showing it's going to cost ten times more than the benefit it's going to return, is that something that alarms you, is that something that you believe probably is not worthwhile in pursuing? >> that would be of concern to me, and it should be, yes. >> okay. just give me just a quick

overview. i know this is also in your statement you said that you've been hearing from thousands of americans about what works and what does not work. just what's working, what's not working from things you've heard from them? >> i think there's a lot of americans who still feel that they have trouble making their voices heard when they're on the other side of the table in some of these transactions, or if transaction doesn't work out and they're now feeling with a mortgage servicer, a debt collector, someone down the road. again, i'm sure it's not anything different from what you hear every day from your constituents who sometimes are at their wits end in coping with situations where they'd just like to know somebody's standing on their side and helping helpi. i know you do that. >> appreciate your testimony, mr. cordray. thank you, madam chair. >> thank you. the committee will stand in recess. we have two votes, we'll get back as quickly as we can. thank you for your patience. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> in the interest that everybody's here, we're going to go ahead and start if that's okay. mr. green for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. and, again, mr. director, thank you for being here. i'd like to visit with you quickly on several issues. i'd like to start, if we may, with the small banks and credit

unions. as i've indicated, been meeting with them, and they have expressed some concerns, and i'd like to give you an opportunity to share with some of us some of the outreach efforts that you have in place to allay some of their concerns. >> so thank you, congressman. it is something that i have indicated as a point of emphasis for the bureau, and this goes back to my personal background. i served, as i mentioned before, the elected state treasurer in ohio and also as attorney general. as state treasurer, i worked a great deal with smaller banks in the state because we had a small business lending program that we made available to them, and a number of them participated in it. and out of that work we created a community bank, bankers' council that advised me about all aspects of the work we were doing at the treasury and really improved our work. when i became attorney general, i continued that and had a

bankers' advisory council on the kind of financial issues that we touched on in the attorney general's office. and so i've said i'm going to do the same as director of this bureau. we're going to have both a community banks' advisory could council and a credit union advisory council. we just met earlier this week to work out how we're going to select members for that and frequency of meetings and the like. and i, they're going to have very direct input to me. the other thing is that, excuse me, we are required by the law in a number of our rule makings to have special panels that give small providers and small banks the opportunity to give us very direct input about rule proposals and how that would effect their operations and whether there should be adjustments made and the like. that is something we're going to consider with each of our

proposals. we have issued one final rule thus far on remittance transfers, the international transfers of money that many people engage in, and we have issued a supplemental proposal to consider whether there should be a threshold of institutions that don't do these transactions as a regular matter who should arguably be exempt or on a relaxed footing with some of the requirements. >> now, reasons to our service -- with reference to our service members, i see that you have the office of service member affairs. i'm eager to hear what you have to say about this. i'm amazed at how important this has become to our country. the veterans as well as those on active duty, so could you share a few thoughts, and then i'll have one more question for you. >> sure. it is, as you say, i think you're exactly right, it is of increasing importance to our country because we have a whole new crop of veterans who are or will be returning from active

duty, many of whom were activated from national guard status. and making sure that they are protected both during their active duty which they have very special provisions in the law for them and after they come back, a lot of emphasis right now on hiring veterans and making job opportunities available. but similarly, we want to protect them because many of them have benefits coming under the g.i. bill, and whenever you have money coming, there are people who have different ideas for you, and many of them are not in your own self-interest. so, look, i've been very impressed both when as a colleague of mine and then since becoming director as i work with holly petraeus. she has been a strong voice for our military. she spends a lot of time going across the country visiting military bases and bringing back the insights that she gleams from those trips about the needs

and struggles not only of service members, but their families and making sure that we give voice to those concerns whether they're within the narrow jurisdiction of the bureau or whether it means working with the department of defense or department of education or others. there's much that she's getting done. and we want to protect service members every way we can because it feels like the appropriate way to repay our debt to people who have risked so much, sacrificed so much for the liberties of the rest of us. >> thank you. and finally, my district is quite diverse. we have the ballot in my district printed in the four languages; english, spanish, vietnamese and chinese. so i'd like to know what you're doing in terms of language translation to make sure that we're communicating with all persons in the country. lawfully here, i might add. >> first of all, that's fascinating. second of all, at the bureau

maybe the most direct way we hear from people is on our consumer complaint line. and we are able -- and this is very important to us, we created this capacity -- we're able to field inquiries from people in 187 languages which is, you know, pretty much covers the waterfront in this country as best we can tell. and we don't want anybody to be blocked from being treated fairly as a consumer by the fact that there's some sort of language barrier that they can't make their voice heard. we also know that many communities where there is a language barrier, they can be the targets of predatory schemes and plans because there's an assumption, often sadly correct, that they will not pursue law enforcement remedies or complain to the government, that they'll just take their lumps. we don't want that to be the case. we want those communities to be just as protected as the majority community, and if that means breaking down language

barriers to do it, that's something that feels like it's appropriate for us. >> thank you, madam chair. i owe you a minute and 15 seconds. [laughter] >> thank you. mr. renacci for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. i want to welcome a fellow buckeye, and i'm sure saturday night we'll be agreeing on which team should be winning. >> we sure will. >> mr. cordray, i've heard serious concerns about the examination policy under whether one or more enportion thement attorneys accompanies cfpb examiners on all exams. some have pointed out that none of the federal banking agencies have ever done this and that having enforcement attorneys participating in exams has a chilling effect on the examination process. i'm afraid that the cfpb practice is intimidating and does not foster the openness that should characterize the relationship between the cfpb and the institutions examined. indeed, this practice feeds the fear that the cfpb's main purpose or object during an exam

is to obtain documents and information that later can be used to launch an enforcement action. are you concerned about this as far as the institutions' perception of the cfpb? >> it is something i've had discussions with a number of bank ceos about. i make it a point, i frequently am calling through the list of the different financial institutions that we're now working with to make sure that they know there's an open line of communication to me. some of them have raised the issue, and i've taken pains to explain that this is, we are trying to integrate our supervision and enforcement teams. we want the supervision teams to understand where enforcement works and why and how. and we want the enforcement team to understand how supervision and examinations work and how. and that that often may be a preferable way to address and resolve problems which is a new thing for a lot of enforcement attorneys who come from context like it was new to he coming

from an -- me coming from an attorney general's office. so i have indicated it's not an attempt to create some sort of macho message that we're sending. we don't have regional counsels, and so this is one way to insure that our examination teams have proper support. people shouldn't read any message into that. and none is intended. >> okay. um, on enforcement also, according to some reports you may be able to confirm this, the cfpb enforcement staff now has over 100 attorneys which is more than twice as many as currently employed by the occ. this disparity is striking since unlike the occ the cfpb has no 150-year track record of supervision and regulation on which to judge its reasonably-anticipated enforcement needs. will enforcement be a principle or, you know, will it be a principle focus of these examinations? >> first of all, i think that that's, that number is out front of where we are at the bureau. i don't think it's accurate that we have 100 enforcement

attorneys at the moment. but what i would say is what people need to keep in mind is that we are supposed to enforce the law not only against the banks, the large bank institutions like the occ does, but also a very significant, densely-populated nonbank realm as well. and we're going to need enforcement attorneys to address a lot of problems in that area. we're talking about debt collection, we're talking about mortgage issues both servicer and brokers. a lot of areas that people have a lot of dissatisfaction with and that we need to make sure that the laws are being respected, that they're being followed, that they're being enforced. so i do think that our emphasis is that enforcement is one of a number of tools, all of which are essential to doing our job well. and i think particularly given the fact that we're dealing with both banks and nonbanks and no federal oversight of nonbanks

has previously existed, this is appropriate. but we will continue to calibrate that as we go. we're learning as we go every month as you can imagine. >> um, based on consumer testimony, the cfpb's overdraft protection, it's apart that there exists in the marketplace a growing need for short-term credit options. i believe that it is critical that we identify and address the small number of lenders who operate illegally whether they are insured depositors or nonbanks. my concern, however, is that overregulation by the cfpb of the vast majority of regulated banks and nonbank lenders will limit innovative products and access consumers need to legitimate short-term credit. can you provide some assurances that that will not be the case? >> so that's a great question, it's an issue that we're thinking a lot about at the bureau. we had our first field hearing on the issue of short-term,

low-dollar loans. we recognized that that is an area where consumers have a real demand, they need that product. but we're concerned that products in that area need to be products that help consumers rather than harm them. there are some banks that are now coming coming into that sphd competing. we'd like to see robust competition with good products and good customer service for consumers who have short-term needs, and many do, no question about it. not everybody has, you know, a rich family member who's always there to provide $500, $700 when they need it. so we want to foster competition in that area. but it's something we're thinking carefully about because there are some predatory products as well, and we want to encourage the good products, and we want to discourage the bad products, frankly. >> thank you, mr. cordray. i yield back. >> mr. sherman for five minutes. >> thank you, director cordray. in a world of dark, of the darkness of the filibuster, a

recess appointment offers one little glimmer of light. [laughter] and if a series of pro forma sessions constitute real sessions of the senate, then cartoons are real people. i welcome you to this committee. i've got one long question dealing with mortgage finance and then a whole bunch of questions that are probably so numerous that for those you'll probably want to just respond for the record. the bureau is currently working on the ability to pay qualified mortgage regulation. this is going to shape the future of the mortgage market. and people's ability to buy homes. congress created this ability to payroll to insure, in fact, that creditors were determining a consumer's ability to repay the loan before making the mortgage. everybody agrees you make a mortgage to someone who can

afford to repay it. however, we've heard from consumer groups, i've heard from industry, i've heard from others that the bureau's current thinking might give us a regulation that is so stringent that it could reduce access to mortgage credit in what is already a tight mortgage-lending environment. um, so i'd like your comment on this qualified mortgage rule, specifically whether you intend it to be a broad measure based on ability to pay or a narrower measure that might deny creditworthy buyers access to credit. you've indicated a desire to finish the rule by the middle of this year, so when finalized, will it require lenders to determine that the borrower has a reasonable ability to pay? under dodd-frank the bill the

lenders can satisfy this requirement by originating a qualifying mortgage which is a safer, more sustainable product, and how will that definition of qualifying mortgage relate to the rules that you're putting together on ability to pay? >> okay. >> i told you it was a long question. [laughter] >> long question, but i have long answers, typically, so maybe they match up. as i said earlier on this subject, i want to be a little careful because it is a pending rulemaking. >> uh-huh. >> there was the proposed rule that the federal reserve put out, and it's now fallen to us to finalize that rule. we are consulting with other agencies, and we've received extensive input on the rule from consumer groups, from industry groups and from people across the spectrum, all of whom are interested in the mortgage market, the reality market and all of whom -- and we all feel the same way -- want to see it come back to life and to vibrancy. it's going to be important to

the economic recovery. so this is an important statute. we want to get the rule in the right place. we're trying to be careful as we think about it. and we're looking closely at the alternatives that the federal reserve board proposed. we're considering how best to give effect to the language of the statute, and as you indicated, congressional intent in this regard is a salient point to us. insuring access to credit in the market broadly is important to us, and one of the difficulties here is it's not so easy to predict the path forward of the mortgage market. you know, we had a very overheated mortgage market leading up to the financial crisis. there were a lot of lenders that astonishingly were making loans without considering the ability to repay of the borrower, completely ignoring that. they were able, surprisingly, to sell those loans in the secondary market --

>> i'm going to have to interrupt you at this point. >> are yeah, okay. great. >> and i'll have a number of questions for the record. >> okay. >> one of them will relate to atm disclosures which, as you know, have to be a physical disclosure on the machine as well as a screen that pops up as you're operating the atm. well, it's come to my attention that there are people who will rip off the external, physical disclosure. and then somebody will come sue for the fact that it's not on the machine. now that we have a more technological world in which every machine also has the screen warning which is far more noticeable and more important, one would hope that you would write regulations so that you either didn't have to have the physical one or that you had the physical one when you installed the machine, you're not responsible for the fact that somebody comes by and rips it off, then coincidentally

somebody comes by and sues you. so that'll be one of my questions for the record. others will relate to whether to establish an office of regulatory burden monitoring, whether to have credit unions and community banks involved on your consumer adviser ri board -- >> time. >> the fact that you got a 400-page order on remittances, and we'd hope that at least for credit unions and other smaller financial institutions you'd be able to put out something a little bit more streamlined. >> gentleman's time is expired. >> well, i'll ask you, also, when we expect the larger market participants' rule to be finalized. >> okay. >> and we'll get all those submitted as questions for the record, and i -- >> thank you. i'm trying to squeeze it in so we can get it in before the next vote. mr. royce. >> i'd like director cordray to return to that quote that i mentioned earlier in this

hearing, sheila bair's observation that banking agencies' assessments of risks to consumers are closely linked with and informed by a broader understanding of other risks in financial institutions placing consumer protection policy in a separate organization, she said, apart from existing expertise and examination infrastructure could ultimately result in less effective protections for consumers. i'll just ask you if you agree in concept with her concern there. >> well, i hadn't heard that quote before, and i found it curious because the fdic, in fact, has reorganized their own staff to separate consumer protection staff from other staff so that they can make sure they have a more direct focus on these same issues. so they've kind of mirrored dodd-frank.

>> but remember, the quote here is a separate organization. >> yes. >> and that's her point. >> yes. i actually think that the two issues go hand in hand. i don't think that you can have a safe and sound financial institution that is not treating its customers in a sustainable basis for the long term. if they're eating their customer base by exploiting them in the short run which is the kind of things that raise consumer protection concerns, they will not be a safe and sound institution in the long run. so i think there's much more harmony between these concepts than people have recognized. i also think, though -- and i would agree with you that it we hooves us to collaborate closely with our fellow regulators to make sure that we aren't inadvertently, we certainly don't intend, undermining anything about the safety and soundness of the financial service which would also disserve consumers. >> but, of course, however, since we've lost the argument

for inclusion in one organization or in one entity for these funks so that -- functions so that as she pointed out you could share that information and have that broader understanding of other risks in financial institutions in terms of your decision making, would you agree that the authors of this bill went to great lengths during deliberations to insure that you were not required to consider safety and soundness? >> well, i'm not sure i would agree with that. under the new law, i sit as part of the financial stability oversight council along with my fellow regulators. the, what's called the fsoc has the ability to override our rules if they threaten the safety and soundness of the system. i think that means we'll have to and should want to take that into account as we write rules and also seek out and hear their perspective and have that inform

us. again, looking -- i'm sorry. >> right. with a, with a super majority vote. i would point out that perhaps the reason i am focused on that issue of not considering safety and soundness is because i tried during the markups, during dodd-frank to have that included and failed in that endeavor. but let me go to another concern that i have here, and it has to do with the cfpb will now have the authority to rule whether a state law is inconsistent with federal consumer protection laws. and i was going to ask what standards will the cfpb use when exercising this authority. because if little is done in terms of keeping the states on the same page, then we could end up with a patchwork of varying

consumer protection laws, and would you agree that that would be bad for consumers and businesses? >> well, i think we've had a patchwork of consumer laws in this country for decades, and it's, you know, another term for it is federalism. >> or maybe articles of confederation would actually be the term for it because there are exceptions like in the insurance industry where we do have 50 different regulators, 50 set of rules, 50 sets of separate markets and a consequence to loss for the consumers as a result and loss to businesses. but the real reason we gave up on the articles of confederation and tried to go to one national market was to avoid just such a comeuppance. because that is what was so costly pre-federalist system. the idea under the federalist system was that we were going to have at least one national market. that's not where we ended up, and that's where i hope that rather than compound this which

i think dodd-frank will do, you might work in the other direction to create one national market. >> gentleman's time has expired. mr. westmoreland. >> could i respond to the congressman? >> quickly, please. quickly. >> can one of the things we're supposed to do is insure coordinated enforcement of the federal law here. dodd-frank was unusual in allowing states to enforce the federal law. we want to make sure that we aren't going in 50 different directions on federal law. as for state law, you know, we're inclined to be respectful of the states as we have situations or if they come to your attention you want to bring them to our attention, we'll be very interested in hearing about concerns in that regard. >> thank you, direct director. >> mr. wes moreland, five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. cordray, what would be your personal -- right over here. >> thank you. >> it's hard to get the direction from down there.

what would be your personal definition of fair? the -- f-a-i-r? >> congressman, i don't know that my personal definition is relevant here because "unfair" is a defined term in the law, and my job as director of this bureau is to enforce the law that congress has enacted and, therefore, we will apply the terms that congress specified as to what unfair means. but i do think it's likely that you and i and most people would have a fairly common sense probably consensus view of what is fair and unfair. it's not to say we'd agree in every circumstance. there probably would be a significant number of circumstances where we'd all agree that something was unfair, and then there'd be areas that are gray areas where we should as a bureau, i think, tread cautiously and be a little careful. you don't want to come down hard on people when things are not clear. >> okay, that's fine.

what's the definition of fair that you're going by? >> it is the definition in the dodd-frank act which itself builds on years of case law and interpretation -- >> okay. >> -- by the federal trade commission. >> what is the definition that you go by that dodd-frank lays out? >> i don't have it in front of me, but it is a defined term. and the term is defined on the basis of decades of case law that are very, have been very carefully worked out, and this is not an area of controversy, i think, for financial institutions under our purview. they understand that law. their concern to us that they've expressed is that we not go deviating from that in some unexpected direction which we do not intend to do. >> do you have a definition of personal responsibility? >> that is not a defined term under the law, so i could give

you my own view of it. >> okay. >> and i will. i think that consumers have a responsibility to make their own decisions and to be responsible and accountable for their own decisions. they're the ones who have to live with those decisions. but i do think there's much that we can do as a bureau and as a country to make sure that consumers are better informed about the choices that they may be making. and we have a responsibility to try to make those choices more accessible to consumers so that they're not confused by back-end pricing, by dense, fine print that doesn't specify terms very clearly and that sometimes fosters and takes advantage of that customer confusion. >> so you're admitting that there is some personal responsibility involved when people make financial decisions and that there are certain consequences to those decisions, correct? >> i would acknowledge that, absolutely. yes. >> and do you or the consumer

finance protection board, do y'all ever recommend products or push a certain product for somebody? such as a 30-year loan versus a a.r.m.? do you promote those type of things, or is that a perm -- personal decision? >> i don't think that as a bureau it is our role to promote or hawk particular products. that's not what we're doing. but it is our role to enforce and to implement the law. congress has made some judgments here about some of the exotic mortgage products, for example, that led to the mortgage crisis, the financial meltdown, the credit crunch that destroyed many businesses in this country and cost a lot of people jobs and homes. we will implement those decisions. to the extent we have judgments to make, we'll try to make them very carefully in this realm --

>> but you're not trying to go to a plain vanilla or everybody gets the same thing type loans? >> i don't think we're trying to mandate products for individuals. i think if people are presented with an array of choices that are responsible choices, that are clearly explained, then ultimately they have to make their own decisions. i would agree with you, i think, on that. >> do you think it enters into the fact that, um, i think your report was disappointing to say the least, and do you think that has anything to do with there not being -- that you don't have any accountability to congress as far as funding is concerned? >> i think we have more accountability to congress on funding than any of the other banking agencies because all of them are independent of the appropriation process, and i don't hear any strong must movee to put them under the

appropriation process. the occ's been around 100 years, federal reserve's been 100 years. we have a statutory cap which none of them have, we're susceptible to audit. i'm always pleased to come up here and talk to you about the work we're doing and hear from you about our concerns. if there was anything you were disappointed in our semiannual report as you just indicated, happy to have my staff work with yours to understand how you would like us to do better because we want to improve as we go. >> gentleman's time has expired. mr. duffyment. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. cordray, just to be clear, i was in here for a pretty decent part of the hearing but not all of it. it's fair to say that the rules that come out of the cfpb that apply to big banks will also apply to smaller banks as well but just implemented by a different regulator, is that fair to say?

>> they will apply to all banks, and that's one of the reasons why i have said that we should consider carefully whether they, perhaps, should apply in a different way to smaller banks that don't have an army of compliance officers and may have different, simpler processes and cannot afford the bear some of the same transitional and other costs. >> and that's been one of my concerns. >> yes. >> i have a lot of small community banks in my district, and the way it seems today is that the rules are still going to apply to them, and they don't have the resources to hire new compliance officers and new attorneys. even though you may not be enforcing them, someone else will be enforcing those rules on them. it's also fair to say that we could have a consumer that is seeking out a certain product, and you could deem the product fair, but it could also be deemed abusive as well, is that

correct? it could be fair but also abusive? >> yeah. we were having this discussion earlier. congress used three terms in that passage, "unfair, deceptive and abusive" acts or practices which seems to be an indication that congress believed and it defined the terms to some degree that each of them is distinct, although there may well be some considerable overlap among them. >> and in regard to the term "abusive," was it your testimony that you believe that the definition as set out by congress is sufficient and there's no further definition that needs to be made by the cfpb? >> it was my testimony that sometimes people have referred to the abusive as not a defined term. it, in fact, is defined and was defined very explicitly by congress. our role as an independent federalling agency is to enforce and implement the law that congress has enacted. so that's the term, that's the way they've defined it.

our job is to try to apply that to specific facts and circumstances. if congress at some point is going to rewrite that law, we will implement whatever law congress writes. >> and, um, so to look at the phrase "abusive," the term "abusive," it does give if you want to call it a definition or lays out some guidelines for what abusive is, and at one point it says "takes unreasonable advantage of." do you have an idea of what unreasonable advantage means? do you have a definition of what unreasonable advantage means? and how would that be implemented? how if you're a small bank in wisconsin would you go, the cfpb is going to be looking at us taking on reasonable advantage? >> well, i think the term "reasonable" is a common term in the law. it's a common term in tort law, the reasonable man is the that courts have used for centuries to try to define behavior, and it becomes more carefully defined over time. i think that if banks are in a

position where they fear they may be deemed to be taking unreasonable advantage of their customers, we had the example earlier of peddling a exotic mortgage product to an elderly widow. probably would be something where the bank should take a slightly different approach than if they're peddling it to a more sophisticateed consumer. >> and so you would agree, though, that it's a subjective standard. no bright line standard on how this can be implemented for the phrase "abusive," it is subjective to the director or to your staff on what that means. >> no, i don't think that's -- i wouldn't agree with that characterization. i think it's a facts and circumstances test. i think that most good businesses know it when they see it. they know when they're walking the line, and they know when they're far beyond the line. they also can communicate with us to get more guidance -- >> but humans view facts differently, and if there's no bright line test, what you may

find abusive someone else may not. what is abusive in alabama may not be abusive in wisconsin. isn't that fair to say? is. >> i think it is the case that what is abusive and takes unreasonable advantage can differ from circumstance to circumstance. >> i only have 30 seconds left. i want to have you talk to me about this because, also, when we talk about an unreasonable standard, it talks about on the part of the consumer of the material risk, cost of conditions of the product or service. and you had referenced in our case law we'll reference a reasonable man. what would a reasonable person know or should know when they engage into that agreement? but this standard isn't a reasonable person, this is the individual standard. so you're a small banker in the wisconsin, and you have one person come in, and the standard that you use with them may not be abusive, but the next person that comes in the same standard would be used, but because of their background, because of their education, because of

their experience it could be abusive for the second customer that comes in. how do you comply with this law? >> i think good businesses do this all the time, sir. i think they think carefully about which customer they're dealing with. most of the community bankers and credit unions i speak to tout the fact that they know their customers, they know them well, they tailor their dealings with the customer to the situation of that customer. it's not one size fits all. i think that's part of their strength. i would also point out there's other prongs of that definition that are much more objective such as taking unreasonable advantage of the fact that the consumer is not able to choose their provider. that's true of debt collectors and others. and in that setting there's really nothing that's subjective at all about that. so the fact that some of this, some of this definition which congress has laid down and we are required to implement may be firmer and some of it may be softer, i think, is not surprising. if you all decide at some point

to rewrite this, we will implement whatever law you write. >> thank you. >> gentleman's time -- stivers for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chairwoman, and i'd like to thank rich for being here. the problem with having such low seniority on the committee is i don't get a chance to tell all my friends and colleagues who have left that rich is one of my constituents. i've known him for years, and he's -- i've found him to be great public servant who cares deeply about this country and tries to do the right thing, and he also listens. so i appreciate him coming to testify before us today. while some of us on this side of the yiel aisle are unhappy about the process under which you were appointed, i do want to assure my colleagues on the record that the president picked someone who i think can carry out this job very well and do it in the right way insuring we try to protect consumers while still looking out for the safety and soundness as well as competitiveness of our financial services industry.

and i hope, i would urge you to continue to look out for both competitiveness and safety and soundness while you're protecting consumers because they are interrelated. and if we put our financial services institutions out of business in the name of consumer protection, we haven't really protected anyone. so, um, i appreciate you being here, and, um, i did have a thought for the gentleman from california who's left who did prepare pro forma sessions to cartoon sessions, and i'm just curious if gentleman believes the payroll tax cut that was passed during a pro forma session is a cartoon tax cut. i'm not sure if he does, and he's left, so i won't get my question answered today, but i would like to turn to more serious business and talk to you about section 1100g of dodd-frank which, um, requires you to put safeguards in place to insure the new regulations don't lead to further reduction in the availability or

affordability of credit for small businesses and consumers. and i'm just curious what kind of safeguards you're put anything place to make sure that that happens because, obviously, we all believe in consumer protection, and i know mr. royce from california talked about how he believes it should be integrated. i hope we can integrate it well, and i hope that you'll work with the other regulators to integrate consumer protection into everything. but i do want to make sure that we keep affordable, available credit for our small business and consumers. >> thank you, congressman. and, first of all, to go back to a point you made a moment ago which i very much agree with, it does not help protect consumers if we undermine the safety and soundness of the financial system. consumers depend on the availability of credit to be able to do things like buy homes, to access education, to be able to manage and control their spending. and if the system does not, does not provide those opportunities to people, then their lives are

stultified as a result. and i also very much agree that having a competitive, vibrant financial sector is good for consumers for all those same reasons. lots of availability of choice and the like. so one of the things that we'll try to be very mindful of and as you point out our governing law, which is the only thing that gives us authority to do anything, does tell us that access to credit is one of the chief objectives that we're supposed to serve. we will try to be mindful of that as we go about our different tasks. one of the tasks i talked a little bit about today is this ability to repay rule in the mortgage market. and there are other mortgage rules that we're required to develop. in the end, we want a mortgage market where credit is available to people that they can, you know, in a reasonable way, in the leadup to the financial crisis, the mortgage market was a market in which credit was available on some of the most bizarre terms.

nonunderwritten loans that paid no attention to people's income, to their ability to repay, to their assets and lots of falsification. it was a very broken market. and one of the things we need to keep in mind is as a result of that we had the credit crunch which has hurt -- >> i only have a minute left. >> i'm sorry. >> if you could give me the answer what you're doing to safeguard affordability and availability in writing, that'd be great, and i do want to wick quickly just mention one other thing, and that's the bureau's working on a two-page prototype credit card agreement, is my understanding, and i understand that the printed portion in the contract with definitions comes in at about 400 -- i'm sorry, 4,431 words, and that doesn't include definitional terms that are housed on other pages. so we're talking about a two-page agreement, a one-page summary and somewhere between 2-7 pages of definitions with other untold information tacked

on too. and i'm just curious, you know, if goal is to make sure that people understand and read these contracts, why we aren't building on the one-page agreement summary that's now available under the truth in lending act rather than developing a government-designed contract? >> so we're -- it's a good question, and it's one that we're trying to carefully consider. we're not at this point trying to operate in this area by putting out a dictate or a single rule that everybody has to follow. we've come out with a prototype agreement. several institutions have been interested in piloting that agreement. we're seeing lots of other institutions come out with their own shorter agreements. i think what we're all moving forward, and there seems to be a lot of interest in the industry on this too is a shorter summary agreement that people can read and understand that pulls out the key points. and ten there's lots of other information -- then there's lots of other information that maybe it'd be good for them to have, maybe it protects the institution existence liability

that maybe could be presented on the internet. there could be reference to it, but it doesn't necessarily have to pollute the short, clear agreement in ways that cause customers not to read anything which is what we've seen a lot of. so i think that's what we're working toward, and a lot of institutions are interested in working towards that, and i think we'll end up with some pretty good consensus around this. >> thank you. i yield back my nonexistent time. >> the gentleman's time has expired, so it's just the two of us, and you said you'd stay until two, so it's you and me for another hour. [laughter] that is a joke. anyway, the chair notes for some members may have additional questions, i think mr. sherman mentioned he was going to have some for this panel. without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses into the record. i'd like to thank you for your patience. >> thank you. >> i know it's been kind of a her key jerky day, and i appreciate your honesty and your

response in responding to all of the questions. >> gives me better appreciation for all the schedules you have to keep. >> with that, hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] >> coming up next, the feminist majority hosts a forum on ballot measures affecting women. after that at noon eastern we'll be live with a briefing on a white house proposal for protecting consumer data privacy. and later canadian prime minister stephen harper sits down for a wide-ranging interview at the woodrow wilson center on his country's relations with the u.s. >> later today from the spy museum in washington, d.c., you can see a live booktv webcast on the debate on the truth of

the 9/11 attacks. you'll hear from jonathan kaye, he's the author of "among the truthers: a journey through america's growing con spear cyst underground." he'll face off with webster tarpley, author of "9/11 synthetic terror, made in the usa." the debate will be moderated by "newsweek" and daily beast contributing editor david fromm. you can watch it live online today at 6:30 p.m. eastern by logging on to booktv.org. >> when we're warned in the next 12-18 months america will suffer a catastrophic cyber attack, they don't choose nose words indiscriminately. it tells me that we have to move rapidly, but not in a way that, you know, violates privacy or the basic tenets of privacy and

that encourages quick reaction, not sort of regulatory environment. >> tonight, the chairman of the house subcommittee on communications and technology, congressman greg walden, on cybersecurity and privacy at 8 ian on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> the feminist majority recently hosted a forum on issues important to women in the 2012 election. the following discussion focused on a review of upcoming ballot measures as well as allegations of efforts meant to disenfranchise voters. this runs about an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> this next forum is called "coming to a state near you: round-up of ballot initiatives and voter suppression efforts." you've heard a little bit today already about some of these so-called personhood initiatives that are going to be on state ballots.

we have only of the leading expert -- some of the leading experts to tell you a little bit more about where those are happening and the impact that those can have. you're also going to hear about the drive for equal marriage both in states where we're expecting anti-equal marriage initiatives to be put on the ballot as well as, literally, a couple of states where we're putting our initiatives on the ballot to win back equal marriage. and then you're also going to hear about the ongoing fight for workers' rights, some very critical elections in this country revolve around winning back the rights that have been so terribly compromised under these extreme conservative state legislatures and governors that came out of the 2010 elections. we're never going to let that happen again. so i'm going to now introduce

the moderator for this next panel, duverne gains is the coordinator of our choices campus leadership program, also an attorney who works with our national clinic violence project to stop the anti-abortion extremist attacks on clinics all across the country. so, please, welcome duverne gains, and hold your questions until the end. we'll have time for more q&a. >> terrific. thank you, kathy. hello, welcome. [applause] on to the next plenary session. thank you for sticking it out with us. yes, we are, indeed, right now talking about ballot measures and stopping the war on women and what's on deck in 2012 with respect to these measures. ballot measures present an interesting opportunity for us. they're used by our opponents to create division, and we capitalize upon that to unite our movement and fight back and

win. there's a lot going on. we have a distinguished panel here to talk about, um, anti-union initiatives, um, anti-choice and personhood initiatives. um, i'm going to briefly speak about voter identification measures, um, and amendments that have been passed in addition to anti-marriage equality and anti-lgbt initiatives across the country. um, we are -- it's been an interesting last two years with respect to voter identification which is, i think, a good way to perhaps kick off this plenary session. last fall i was in mississippi working side by side with megan darby and planned parenthood and the aclu. we, the feminist majority foundation, were very active on college campuses throughout the state working to defeat initiative 26, that was the personhood initiative that made

it to the ballot in mississippi. [applause] yes, that was a huge victory. [applause] um, and i don't want to steal megan's thunder because, actually, i will, i will boast a little bit about what happened in that particular battle and the incredible effort that planned parenthood and the aclu and other groups -- especially planned parenthood -- put into that victory coupled with our work on the college campuses. we were 31 points behind two months out before the election. 31 points. we literally, i know planned participant hood put up offices -- parenthood put up campaign offices overnight, i mean, threw them up. it was literally astonishing. and the incredible grassroots movement that took place in that state, i think it was something like, um, oh, thousands and thousands of phone calls that were made, over 412,000 phone calls made within a four-week period. 20,000 doors were knocked on, and mississippians said, no,

we're not stupid. we know that this is misogynyst, and we are not going to change and amend our constitution with this crazy personhood initiative. and we defeated that measure by ten points in the end. i would like a little round of applause this, thank you. [applause] and a tremendous effort. but unfortunately, we lost when it came to a voter identification measure. that was on the same ballot. and voter identification measures are out to disenfranchise millions of americans. and we saw a massive proliferation in 2011 of voter identification measures nationwide. i think over 34 measures were introduced across, in state legislatures across the country in 2011. and there's at least 32 that have been introduced in 2011. and many of them have passed. and it's interesting that states like texas, it's passed,

wisconsin, south carolina, and many of these states are summit to preclearance -- subject to preclearance under the voting rights act because of bad behavior in the past in terms of discrimination. so they're actually subject to preclearance by the u.s. department of justice, and guess what? they're not getting it because we know these are racist, sexist laws that are designed to disenfranchise voters. how are they designed to disenfranchise voters? well, if you're required to get a state-issued voter identification like a driver's license, if you're elderly, if you're over 75, most individuals do not have photo identification anymore, especially driver's licenses. um, if you are a student, you won't have the same address as your voter identification, as your driver's license because you're moving constantly, you know, from one year to the next a new dorm, out of state. in addition, if you are a person of color, many places we're seeing what i would call polling location racial profiling.

you're only asked for identification if you're a person of color. so it's sort of a selective bias in disenfranchisement that way. not to mention the facts of what we see in the certain areas, there are people of color who are less likely to have photo identifications, photo ids compared to their white counterparts. um, or disabled individuals, individuals who can't go down to the dmv at the drop of a hat to get the new, um, strict photo id that now is required in their state. so there's really, um, i think it was best said that voter identification -- voter fraud is about as common place as being struck by lightning. so this is a complete ruse, and we must fight back and make sure that we all have the opportunity to vote and, um, and we will. and i'm happy to say, um, wisconsin just their photo identification law was just found unconstitutional. as i said, much of this is being

enjoined in the courts or the department of justice is saying, huh-uh, we know what you're doing, we know this is, essentially, a poll tax or another method of discriminating against segments of the population. so, hopefully, we will win and make sure everybody gets to that ballot box this november and in the primaries this spring. um, and i just wanted to briefly talk about that before i go on to introduce -- and i think i'll start with megan because i mentioned mississippi. and, um, she is here to talk to us about a little bit about what they did there. i think, megan, you were the deputy director of the mississippians for healthy families' campaign which was a main statewide campaign to defeat, um, initiative 26. we, the feminist majority foundation, worked with students across the state through the students voting no on 26 campaign.

um, and megan is currently the, um -- i should get this correct because i know it's a mouthful, so i want to make sure i have it correct. ballot initiative and opposition research manager at planned parenthood federation. um, she has worked all over the country, i understand, on ballot measures including a prior life with afme and please welcome to the stage now megan darby. [applause] ..

so this was really decided in the ballot box that day. we were very fortunate that we not only one, we kind of crushed it. [applause] >> but as we mentioned, unfortunately that wasn't the case of voter id. that was initiative 27 that you. what's interesting to note is that initiative 26 which is the personhood initiatives that i will be talking more in detail on saturday at the campus gathering come if you guys are around, initiative 26 was the least voted initiative of the three.

this was meaning it was only as a couple times before for votes on if we should keep the confederate flag on the state flag, and a gay marriage ban. so this was untraditional. it wasn't an off year in mississippi because all other state offices were out. the man who is now the governor was a huge supporter of personhood. so what we really did and what we are thankful for all of you who help us to do, was we created a climate where people can talk about this and where people have doubt and where people were given permission to be pro-life. because they are in the state of mississippi. and be against personhood. so i think we were the least voted on because we did create a culture of doubt that some people were not comfortable voting now, but they definitely were not comfortable voting this into a. and i'm happy to report that they did try a couple of maneuvers in the state legislators this year to try to

get personhood back up and running, and it has been defeated. so we will not see personhood in mississippi for at least a couple more years. [applause] so let me tell you what we definitely will be seeing. i'm going to start out in the state of north dakota. on the june primary, june 12, there'll be religious liberties ballot initiative. it's a very broad, wide base initiative that will legally make it that you can discriminate based on your religion. it can go as far as birth control refusal, or denying a muslim couple to rent an apartment that you're the landlord. this is a primary that people will be voting in because there is an open senate seat. so that's the first one. obviously, our organization and everybody in this room does not want discrimination, and especially with refusal fight that we are still going through actually, this is something that we will be watching. now moving onto florida, there

is a privacy and public funding ban. this was placed on by the florida legislator last year. what the space we does, public funding will deny public funding for abortion. we don't know, we're still exploring what this really means, but this also could impact public employees, private insurance because technically it is paid for by public funds. it could take away abortion care from private insurance people that are employed by the state. and also there is a little provision written in. the florida privacy in the constitution is actually stronger than the united states constitution. we would like to repeal it to the united states stand. what does this mean? because honestly the first time i looked it over was like what? we stop a lot of things because of the strong privacy laws in florida. so repealing it would open the door for a lot of things that might not message we get very far because the protection in their constitution. so this will be happening

november. another thing that will be happening in november, in montana is notification. this was again, put in by the state legislators so we only have one citizens initiative that is definitely on the ballot now out of three. montana last year, a state legislator past eight present notification bill and send it to the governor who is 100% pro-choice. and they said this is what we're going to do. if you vetoed his we will pass something else that will throw constitutional amendment on the ballot next year. so you either sign this or we fight it at the ballot box. so he vetoed and now we have notification in montana. so those are the three that will be printed on the ballots. here's what we think is probably likely in november. i'm sure you have heard personhood is back in colorado. it is. as you know, 2008 it was

defeated, overwhelmingly, and in 2010 they gained three points. still defeated overwhelmingly. after the victory, keith mason had of personhood u.s.a. who is the leader, put out a press statement comparing itself to susan b. anthony -- [laughter] in their campaign for women's suffrage in south dakota. in the campaign, that was unpopular at first but slowly started again and slowly started to gain. he will come back and fight for the unborn. and anyone who does this work, it's very for my that colorado, it's kind of easy to get a ballot initiative on. it's a very low threshold. there's kashmir what they did this year is they rewrote the title, so he for mississippi here's what i like to go personhood classic. which is just the basic language, life begins at conception, life begins at fertilization. and what they found themselves,

because colorado is a little bit more pro-choice than mississippi. so what they found themselves in mississippi was they were not prepared for was talking about ivf and talking about birth control. so they decide that they're going to start making these hybrids. so they did one and it wasn't and -- a pretty basic one. a person applies to every human being regardless of the method of creation. a human being is a member of homo sapiens at any stage of developing. so there was a challenge to balaton, and that was lost. so when it was lost it was appealed to the state supreme court and that was lost. so last week personhood u.s.a. took off their petition signature drive at numerous planned parenthood health centers across the state of colorado. so we do expect to see that. we probably won't know until december. another when we do expect to see is a public funding ban in oregon, and like florida, the

basic no public funding for abortion. but unlike florida, oregon is where the only state that does get public funding for abortion. this was tried to times before. in 1978, and in 1986. this wasn't the first time they've seen the fight and they're expecting to see it again. it is backed by oregon's right to life which is well organized. and again we're unsure what the implications will be for public employees to have insurance if this will cut their care also. so i'm really going to go over my watchlist, and and this is things that have been filed, things have been moving but we're unsure what the future of it will be. so the first is parental notification in california. this is the fourth time. this was defeated in 2005, 2006 and 2008. they have filed multiple initiatives this year.

so when one expires there's already one that can keep on going. they've done this up until june, and we expect this because they're not as organized as they were in the past and they are trying to gain time to get the funding, the organization to collect signatures. another one is religious liberties in colorado. this is just filed my focus on the family. this has gained a lot of earned media. and right now they are waiting for the state to approve the time and the language, and i'm assuming when that happens there will be multiple groups at will be trying to appeal, not to state the border but to the supreme court to try to stop it. another one is personhood in montana. they try for personhood three times. the coalition partners to have always done a very successful declined to sign campaign. they do this around the primary because in montana that uses around the time that people are collecting the signatures. they can do polls, they can talk

to people as they're going in and out. so that's always been a strategy that is worked in the past. this year though the cofounder of personhood u.s.a. moved to montana last year and has made it his mission to make sure that person it gets on the ballot in montana. he actually something is the only person clicking signature. in some places in the state. we have an eye on the. personhood in nevada, and ensure everyone here has seen some press about this. so in a span of months by several titles by two separate groups were filed and four withdrawn in the state of nevada. so what they would be doing come at first of all me aback a. the two groups were not getting along. so one with another press release saying we are the true person to. the other one said no, we are the true personhood. and so great. my theory is okay, great. so they would file an forward

strong. this is what would happen. someone would go and appeal, and try to start a process to make sure this didn't make it on the ballot. what do we do is wait for that complaint was public, withdraw to strengthen their language. so after this happens three times, the aclu and the planned parenthood do in the state were working together to help with the lawsuits decided there were no longer going to help the opposition strengthen their language. so it took a couple of weeks. i think they were a little shocked and kind of like oh, where are the lawsuits? when that didn't happen, chuck gallagher, who is one of the groups that pushes these initiatives in the state, he was a police officer once upon a time and was called to clinics, someone was blocking access for a patient and refused to get involved because of his religious belief. he withdrew his petition and he has thrown his support in

personhood nevada. and that's the group, the other group, so we're waiting to see what's signature collection look like. the interesting thing about nevada is if it does get on the ballot and it does pass, we have to do it again in 2014 for it to become law. personhood in ohio, i think you guys are probably noticing a trend. this was filed, again, state challenge the title, lost. again, appeals to state supreme court. last week that appeal was denied. and they have been fully collecting signatures across the state. the interesting thing about ohio the is that if i'm a registered ohio voters and i signed the petition, and it's not submitted in 2012, my signature could be used to be submitted at a later date. so they could use 2012 and them being a swing state to build up their pet dish and signatures. because they have until about july 4 to collect over 385,000

signatures. so we are not sure we will see it this year, but it could be a possibility for an off year like 2013 or 2015. personhood in oklahoma, oklahoma is a little bit i of the storm right now. i'm sure you've all seen the revamping of the personhood bill in their legislator. this get past this and overwhelmed with. i think only four people voted against it. this was during the time of the virginia ultrasound. so it quietly went away because there was a lot of outrage, and i don't think the people of obama wanted out outrage on them, too. it has kind of come back, but not only is a legislation on march 1, personhood oklahoma filed a ballot initiative. again, classically which, life begins at conception, and they said they will file three. so we're unsure what that looks

like yet. we're unsure if this is another situation where they wait until there is a challenge in the withdraw, use that challenge to strengthen their language and try again. but they do have kind of a high threshold for oklahoma signatures together. and a fun fact, rick santorum signed the personhood oklahoma initiative in tulsa a couple weeks ago. and it is being used for me and for fund-raising by personhood oklahoma. he is a huge supporter of personhood. personhood oregon, again, basic language. we are kind of sure this isn't going to make the ballot this year they have tried multiple times. just to give you a little bit of reference. in 2010, personhood u.s.a. tried to get personhood on eight ballots. they only got it on one. so, you know, it's pretty easy to file language for ballot

initiatives and pretty easy to get a lot of attention, especially in states that don't usually do not initiative. so it kind of makes it new, but oregon is one of the places where they found fetal personhood but we don't think we'll really see much. some good news, is that there have been failed attempts this year, to get on the 20 oh about. hear what they've tried and what did make. personhood alaska, application was denied, flat out. personhood arkansas, they have tried twice in the past, month, month and have to submit title and summary for personhood to circulate in the state, both times the attorney general has rejected it overwhelmingly. the first decision was 20 pages long but the second was a king. personhood arkansas has submitted a new ballot title but they submitted to a local television station. [laughter] they have not submitted to the governor yet. we are pretty sure at with a 20 page decision and 18 page

decision, this attorney general is not leaving a lot of room for this to be circulate in a state. personhood in california has just recently expired. we didn't see any signature collection, and the group he was regulating it had a press statement right after they submitted their title saying, we are not associate with personhood u.s.a. personhood in florida, now i think a couple people in the room have been one of what i bring up the personhood of florida. the ballot initiatives title for 2012 in florida on personhood has expired. in florida, you need to, i think need to pay like 10 cents a signature is something to have it submitted to the secretary of state. and they're having fund-raising challenges. i also think signature challenges. so they withdrew the 2012 before it expired and submitted it in 2014. so they are actively fund-raising and doing earned me and signature gathering for 2014 but they won't be on 2012. and last but not least, stop the

baby skull crushing and decapitation in north dakota. this was supposed to be a ban on tools used for abortion, and i don't think i need to tell anyone that the title of this really hurt them. [laughter] >> i don't think people are very comfortable with it. so that's my quick and dirty i was about to finish his our but i do want to bring up one thing is think about what her the other panel was talking about. how rick rick santorum and nuking anyone has signed, but mitt romney has. but october 2011 during when mississippi was we started to pick up steam, he went on the mike huckabee show, and mike huckabee has a movie on person. he is a huge supporter of personhood. on september 8 when we lost their appeal on personhood he had a fund raiser in jackson, mississippi. asked him, we support a constitutional amendment of personhood on a federal level?

and mitt romney said absolutely. so with that, -- [applause] >> thank you, megan. i appreciate your description so much. what's frightening to know and having been in mississippi, campaign, is how many of these personhood initiatives are being promulgated by some of the most extreme antiabortion leaders in the country. they are not just, you know, quote unquote pro-life individuals. some of them have ties to the army of god, like patrick johnston in ohio, and other individuals of the army of god is one of, if not the most violent antiabortion extremist organization in the country, individuals linked to bombings, murder, mayhem, unabashedly so have been involved with the army of god and called, been proud of

that association. anyway, so thank you for that. and on that happy note, we are now going to go, i would like to introduce marietta english with your joining us today. marietta is the vice president of the american federation of teachers. she is also -- [applause] teachers, yes. people access to education, good. she's the president of the baltimore teachers union to give sony titles. i try to choose them. i just had come this is a short version but she's also the president of the american federation of teachers in maryland, and she's the past president of metro baltimore alliance of black school educators, and a current board member. and i believe we are so thrilled that she could join us today to talk about being unkind the antiunion initiatives that swept the nation as well, and to celebrate the labour leader and

tireless fighter for fair wages and improved working conditions for teachers throughout the country. thank you. please well, marietta english. -- please well, marietta english. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for this opportunity. there is an antiunion movement across this country are i'm not going to talk about initiatives but i will talk about some of those things that happened across this country. the attack on unions which represents women is an attack on women. when wisconsin's governor scott walker targeted teachers, unions, and nurses unions, firefighters and police unions. you know, so that was definitely an attack on women. and this policy on attack on women is permeated throughout

wisconsin. but what he did was wake up the sleeping giant, because he then woke up all of the women and all of the labor unions, went into wisconsin and, of course, he now has a recall. and we're waiting to get him out of there. [applause] the republicans attack on teachers unions and unions representing other pink collar professions, like nurses, health care workers, early childhood educators, home health aide, they are attacking organizations in which women workers have political voice. that's, we organize in these unions and have a voice in the workplace. and we also have a voice politically. and these other systems our male-dominated comment and i know when i go into a lot of

boardrooms, because i do have a lot of titles, most of them are filled with men. we can barely count the women on hand that sit in those boardrooms. we look around education, a lot of the superintendents who run these systems are men, but the actual work is done by women in the classroom. mitt romney tells us that contributions from unions to political campaigns are a form of corruption. that the implied individuals to organize our corrupt and unpatriotic. oh, my gosh. but when the business band together and they make huge contributions, now thanks to the supreme court ruling that you can make unlimited amount of contribution, well, that's commerce. that's a way of building business. the political passion want to

devalue our voice by calling us names, and they do that all the time. in the health care area, it is difficult to organize at least private sector nurses and health care workers, and it's really hard to organize and public sector also. because these are basically dominated by women. and it's very hard and difficult. such places as upstate new york where employers have tried to circumvent rights by giving nurses charge and responsibilities and calling it supervisors. but yet they still work as nurses. and, of course, in teaching, i can tell you that for the last few years, teacher unions have been bashed all over this country. teachers have been blamed for

everything from why the grass doesn't grow, to why children are not achieving. and every time you hear people like michelle ray, who hasn't taught two minutes, blamed teachers. i can tell you that without teacher unions, we are not the cause of children not achieving. we are not that caused. it is policies that keep children from achieving. we know the -- no one ever comes to the interest and say, what should we do? what policies are great? what should you do? we know that early education helps the children to achieve. and yet those are not mandated programs. those are funds that get cut right away. those are programs -- we know that children need art, music,

phys ed, to be a whole child. and yet, when the decisions come to be made, let's cut those programs. and then when children don't achieve, oh, it must be the teachers fault. it's that old teachers union that keeps their teachers in the classroom. well, no teacher union wants to keep bad teachers in the classroom. teachers unions, only want to make sure that everyone has a right to due process. it's not about keeping bad teachers in the classroom. the american federation of teachers has an excellent dynamite president in randi weingarten. and she is leading the country -- yes, she does. give her a hand. [applause] and initiative that will bring

together businesses and education to help achieve. see, we have a program in west virginia where she is brought together the community, businesses, the union, to help turn that community around. we are, if you talk with the teachers unions, we will lead you the right way. yet they want to bash and blame us for all the ills of society. our union in baltimore, we just negotiated one of the most innovative contracts in the country. where teachers are now being, have a voice about their own career, how fast they will move and whether or not they will move up one way or another, from one pathway to another. given our expertise, i know i've been teaching for a long time, i could probably teach this paper how to read.

[laughter] but nobody comes and asks us what are the things that we can do. there's always a lot of money put into programs, and then the program comes and goes. i don't know how -- are there any teachers in the room? [applause] do you know what i mean? the bring it program and, keep it for a couple of days and then oh, it doesn't work, let's try something different. and then we get blamed when it doesn't work. right now high-stakes tests are governing our whole existence. and yet we don't have a part in developing this test. our children sit for hours. we are in, right now, the maryland state assessment, and the little eight year olds are taking assessments for hours. i mean, it's really, really sad because i can't sit here for hours without having to get out. yet we expected from children.

i wonder if some of these people are sitting in these boardrooms making decisions, having a childhood studies, or have any childhood understanding. they don't understand that teachers can't do this alone. it takes the whole community. it takes the whole community to help educate these children. i know i raised two children, and when my son was in eighth grade i thought he would die. i did know if you would make to the ninth grade. but you keep working with them. to keep working with them and i'm proud to say he is a wonderful teacher. but it takes everybody to do this. it took the school. it took me. it took the community having been called and activities. but you can't just blame us, and you can't just blame teacher unions. because if you come to us, we have the answer. they like to attack workers who want to organize, and those

workers, their job is undervalued. but what i can say is that the more they are attacked, the more we will rise. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much, everybody. it reminds me of what doris, a cofounder of united farm workers and our board member and president said, you definitely, she has an anecdote, used to say, which was that, you know, if you've got a bad, a bad man running around threatening things, like a dog or a horse, you shake a stick at a hive of bees and they will think twice because those bees are organized. and i'm totally, brutally slain that particular metaphor, but it is a wonderful, a wonderful

example. next i would like to introduce our wonderful final distinguished speaker, rea carey who is executive director of the national gay and lesbian task force. ray took over the task force in 2008 and has provided truly visionary leadership for the organization. during her tenure, the task force has accomplished many things that are far too many things to list. i chose one of the biographies i read. i had to pick and choose. but one of them i thought particularly noteworthy is the passage of the lgbt includes this federal hate crimes prevention act, which was a huge victory. also -- yes. [applause] defeating many anti-lgbt ballot measures across the country, and playing a vital role in getting the united states census for the first time to count same-sex

couples in the 2010 census, which is pretty massive. we are, in addition to online leadership academy and many other innovations, i know she has to leave soon, so want to make sure we get are up here. so please well, rea carey. [applause] >> into women's fashion i won't rush their budget to go pick up my daughter from school so i thank the teachers for teaching and actually know she would like -- she loves a good party. so i'll tell her all about you. and i do want to thank the feminist majority given incredible partners in the pursuit of equality. and i know we will continue to work together, and i just want to thank all of you for being part of such an important organization that we at the task force considered to be a sister. so thank you. and, finally, before get into my

remarks i do want to dedicate him today to audrey and rich. a poet, a fighter and a feminist. [applause] >> i'm going to talk about three kind of general things. determination and destiny, love and voice. first determination and destiny. we together as a progressive movement, and i happened to be at an organization that focuses on lgbt issues, but we consider ourselves first to be a progressive organization, and how we work on the quality and how we work on racial and economic justice. we are determined to win marriage equality nationwide. [applause] and we believe that it is our shared destiny to do so. and we have made progress, thankfully. this year doubling the number of

people who can actually get married in states across the country by adding new york state to the list as approved marriage equality. [applause] >> we are pleased about that. but as i was thinking about spending time with you today, i want to talk very much about how our movement, which definitely overlaps, so i want to make that point, but how our movement, the feminist women and the lgbt movement are intertwined, our destinies are intertwined. and, in fact, we have much to learn from each other. after spinning out on my whole life learning from the feminist movement, and my mother is a feminist and my grandmother is a feminist, but also studying what happens to our movement. for example, in 1973 when roe v. wade went through the supreme court, the polling on public, the public polling on whether or not a woman could

have an abortion the first trimester was at 53%. 53% when we won. i don't need to go through everything that is happened since then and defending trying to come in defending everything else it has to do with freedom for our own bodies. as many of you know, we have a number of legal cases that are specifically on marriage equality that a barreling towards the supreme court, barreling towards the supreme court. a number of them may get there very soon, within the next couple of years. the polling on marriage right now is at 53%. familiar. so it is amazing, right? 10 years ago we were not even close to 53%. but it's a cautionary tale. and as i sit here with you today and fight on the lines with you,

in virginia where they are taking away public funding for access to health services for women, and in places across the country, 40 years later after roe went to the supreme court and we are looking at the same percentage, if we don't do much more as an lgbt movement and as a broader progressive movement, to get that number up, to talk to our friends and family, and get way beyond 53%, i know that we are staring at history repeating itself. and i don't want to repeat that history. federally, and we do to overturn the so-called defense of marriage act. i do want to do a piece of education and we're working towards that. i can spend lots of walking time which i'm not going to do. do. many of your family with a we do have to overturn the defense of marriage act and we are moving in that direction. but i have to take a moment to

educate on one point which is that when we overturn the so-called defense of marriage act, it does not mean that we have access to choose to get married across the land. it doesn't. there are 29 states that have constitutional amendments that say that i can't marry my partner, right? so we have to get rid of doma, but we have to make progress in the states. we have to fight off more constitutional amendments that are headed our way, and we have to overturn those that already exists. and at the same time, fighting the federal doma, overturning things in the states, as i said before, we've got a lot of legal cases going, and i think sometimes people say well, surely there'll be a silver bullet. one of these cases will go through and white golfing at. that would be nice but i just don't see it happening that way. the way i see it is like an arcade game. there's that pony game with the

ponies are running across and you're throwing beanbags and your party gets first and then the next pony, all of those ponies are moving, all those horses are running to the finish line of marriage equality and we will get there, but we have to get every single horse across the finish line. and we need your help to do it. [applause] but as arlene spoke earlier during a luncheon, our fate are tied together, particularly on ballot measures. we just heard just two sets of ballot measures that were not even talking about anti-affirmative action or anti-migration this. if you do an overlay of the country you see very clearly how our fates are intertwined. so we must show up for each other. that's why the task force in 2011 we spent our organizers not just to alaska where in just a few short days we're facing a ballot measure our nondiscrimination, but we also sent our staff to mississippi to work on the person of measure. we sent our staff to maine to

secure the vote for people in maine, and we sent our staff to build a base of anti-death penalty voters for a future fight in california. all of those issues affect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. they are our issues. so i invite each of you as we look towards 2012, pick something, pick something that doesn't necessarily have to do with your life, with your family's life, and show up. write a check, participate in a phone bank, volunteer for a campaign, reach out and bring someone with you. and next time, ask them to come and work on something that does affect your life director. i believe we will make a difference. second, i wanted to talk about love. i may, i am deathly a half glass full girl. and i.t. believe that love will win out. and at the heart of the lgbt movement is love.

started thousands of years ago but more recently at the stonewall inn new york city, where bunch of drag queens, gay men, sissy boys and people of color said enough. we will love who we want to love, and we will fight for it. and i believe that love will win out. and i have great hope for this in the future of love, in the future of our ability to marry each other in states like maine where we can make history this year, where they're putting the first proactive marriage measure on the ballot, and we need all of your help to win. this will make history. the first time we've ever won on a proactive marriage ballot measure. [applause] >> i hope in the future in particular because of children, we have a young daughter, elementary school. when market and i got married in the brief window of time when 18,000 other people in california in 2008, we went out

to california. our daughter came with us. she was telling her friends and we prepared her for what her friends might say. because we didn't know, right? two women getting married. it was fascinating because first of all, they already thought we were married. [laughter] we have a house, a kid, a dog, drop her off to school each day. sometimes we forget her lunch. like, we were married to these elementary school children. and when they found out that we had to get married, many of them congratulated us, and the only negative comment was from one of our daughter's friends he was very jealous that she got to be a flower girl. and that was it. that was it. [laughter] but i am reminded we have a long way to go. because at the same time, we are driving through virginia, my daughter and i, she says to me, can people get married in this state? and i really did know how to

answer. -- didn't know how to enter. i don't think any child in this country should have to ask her parents to get married. that should not be a question on the list of any child in this country. into the high school students in this room, i promise you, we are doing everything we possibly can so that this will not be your fight when you are 45 years old, like im. you will be fighting for something else and we will stand with you. but we will not have marriage for your fight, i promise you. [applause] and finally our voice. this has been touched on a number of times today, but we must make our voices heard. and right now, we are facing a huge threat in voter suppression. it is the number one threat.

i know i'm supposed to talk about marriage but i wouldn't be from the task force if i didn't push the envelope a little bit. so, voter suppression, you know, it is literally out of the jim crow playbook, some of the stuff that is going on, right? we have to fight voter suppression. and if you look at where our ballot measures overlap, in states across the country, guess what we're seeing ballot measures? in all of the states where issues are at play. what is true is that it used to be possible to mobilize the right wing base on hating the gays, anti-women's ballot measures, anti-immigration ballot measure, and was happening in this country is that no one of those are the trump cards anymore. they are losing. they are losing. they are losing. and so what do they do? they have to go deeper than that. they have to strike at the very ability for us to cast our

votes. that is offensive but it is antidemocratic, and we must stop this threat to democracy in a country, or none of us are going to win. [applause] i believe that we can stand together. because i've seen it before. again and again. many of you have shown up for us and our families, and i will show up for you. i promise. we will continue to do that. but we have to stand together. there are far too many forces at play to tear us apart. so let's stand together, let us say this democracy, and let our voices be heard. thank you. [applause] >> i'm hoping we have time for some q&a now. so, we have some might max.

i believe, help me pointed out. they are on some tables. yes, the people who are lining up. please go ahead while we have our wonderful panelists spent high everyone. my name is melanie keller and i part of the unite women team, the maryland state chapter. so if they want to come out and rally with us on april 28 in every state. and i just have a question. maryland is a pretty blue state. and looking at the congressional voting record that were passed out the previous, you can see that senator barbara mikulski has 100% record on those measures that are listed. so i just have a question specifically for megan darby of planned parenthood. with everything is going on in states like oregon, montana, texas with the ultra or the transvaginal ultrasound bill, like in states like maryland do? what can voters and residents due to help out, from the

sidelines i guess? because it's easy for us to sit back and rest on our laurels but because in our state things are relatively okay. >> that's a great question. so, i guess the first thing i would tell you is, you know, educate. and talk about it. that is the most powerful thing you can do. to go back to mississippi, we were very fortunate to not only that it picked up steam nationally because people were outraged and he knew about the issue and talk about it, i mean, i could tell you facebook feeds which is full of talk about mississippi. and that's what really gets the ball rolling, and that really can help. i would also say donate, because everything, this is an expensive fight everywhere. and i would also say, you know, locate the people that you think are working on the issue and call them and say what can i do? can it be a house party?

can have a phone into texas day? whatever you can do. but number one, talk about amateur people know about it. because a lot of times they don't. >> can i wait in on the? i think we kind of heard that, that you could do a log with the internet now. because you can talk to people all over the country, just by using the internet. i am from maryland, too, and we send people to pennsylvania, to virginia to do labor walk your we know there are problems in those states, so maybe even doing labor walks in states where you know you have a problem. >> i also want to throw the feminist majority foundation to sense any. i am one of the campus of directors for the choice of campus leadership program. this election year we are putting a call out to all college students, recent high school graduates. if you feel like interning with us or planned parenthood or the

national gay and lesbian task force, all of us, we're going to be active, especially battling these initiatives, colorado, california, all across the country. if you want to intern with us and take a semester off from school this fall and had the experience of a lifetime, we do encourage and i'm happy to speak to you after this plenary session. or go to maine and work on happy marriage equality. but these are opportunities that could be editable to you here now in addition to the world of cyberspace, which in sort of put you everywhere now. thank you. [applause] >> anyone else? yes. >> i actually do not have so much of the question but a, but i want to thank you, rea carey pick your the first person to say transgender here today somebody thank you for saying the word transgender, hitting people that are writing, so thank you. [applause]

>> i'm going to say transgender so i become the second person to transgender. okay. yes? >> im with unite women here in the state of -- no. we don't have a state. so i am representing the greater d.c. and metropolitan area. one of the things that i would like to bring to the attention is that when we talk about women being disproportionately affected, whenever we say that women are disproportionately affected, you can double that number when you talk about minority women being disproportionately affected. and one of the things i would like to say, i find that i don't have, maybe i don't have the tools, but i find it a little difficult to galvanize that minority voice and to bring into the greater fold at times. if you're in, for instance, seattle, washington, someone in your group should be speaking --

there's a large somali population there. if you're into the keynote community, someone should be speaking spanish. there's a large hispanic population there. so i wanted to say to the greater good, and i said to my good, if your group looks just like you, maybe, maybe only you live in your neighborhood but i doubt it. so they need to be a greater outreach. and i'd like to also know how, or find out how, the different consortium of organizations, maybe classes about how to reach across sometimes cultural borders or boundaries so that we understand each other, so that we're able to communicate well and address each other's needs. [applause]

>> eyed, i can't do any of the panelists want to respond to that? >> virginia armstrong, president of the league of women voters in virginia. i have one comment and one question. for the woman from maryland who doesn't have any particular need, related to maryland, please come to virginia. we are in one hell of a mess. [applause] >> secondly, with the league of women voters here, especially want to focus on voter suppression. and do you have any specifics for us that would be helpful? >> a couple of things. unfortunately, there are so many choices to get active, and i think in double lazy t. has done so much work on this, both in

their own -- naacp, and identifying which states are expensing voter suppression laws now. with an eye in particular towards 2013. the opposition thinks we will be a sleep in 2013. so we think 2012 is bad. just wait until 2013. so what i would encourage you to do is, you know, google voter suppression or naacp. in many states there started to ramp up campaigns, or the local naacp chapters may start doing some activities but there are a number of organizations that are starting to do this. a lot of us are trying to also kind of calm in the midst of ballot measures that are specific to some issues, reach out to people who are interested in voter suppression to make sure that we're partnering together as we work on these because we know we'll have to turn around and fight. so look for campaigns in your local area. >> thank you.

>> i just want to say, i have been doing this 25 years, and suddenly i realized what we have to do, women, there are lots of us. the power the men have. we have got to take over the office. we've got to run for the way back senate. the house of representatives. [applause] and i say that word all the time. i hope no one is offended. [laughter] and you've got to do it in the states, too. where so much of this. but we have to do. otherwise, 25 years from now i will not be here, i promise. we will be saying the same thing. [applause] >> thank you. that's a great know to into. i think we need to flood the ticket and hopefully everyone will consider run for office are helping to support an actual woman for public office. thank you, and we're on to our

next plenary, concluding plenary session. >> do i hear --r÷rx@x [applause] >> c-span's 2012 local content vehicles cities tour takes our booktv in american history tv programming on the road. the first weekend of each month. this past weekend featured little rock, arkansas, with booktv up high school election at the university of arkansas. >> collected photographs and he was particularly again interest in the 19th century, civil war in particular. these are two friends, union and confederate, who knew each other prior to the civil war was fought against each other at the battle of pea bridge in 1862 thomas survived the war, came out alive and remain friends after the war and you they are at the age of 100 sitting on the porch talking about the old days spent an american history tv

look at the life of a world war ii japanese internment camp. >> a wonderful book called the art of -- it meant surviving the answer viable. and she talks a lot about how the arts and crafts were sort of how they kept their sanity. and it gave them something to do. and about how depression was so bad in a lot of the camps, and the people, there was a high incidence of suicide. and so people would make these little things, this beauty, to give to each other just as a way to say, you know, we support you and we care about you. >> our lcd cities tour continues the weekend of may 5 and 6th from oklahoma city on c-span2 and three. >> america will suffer a catastrophic cyber attack. they don't use those words indiscriminately.

we are already for five months into that warning bigger gut tells me that we have to move rapidly but not in a way that it violates privacy or the basic tenets of privacy. and that encourages quick reactions, not sort of regulatory environment. >> tonight, the chairman of the house subcommittee on communications and technology, congressman greg walden, on cybersecurity and privacy at 8 p.m. eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> for this your student cam figure competition we ask students to create a video to them and why. today, we're going to walnut, california, to talk with avika dua, an 11th grader at walnut how are you doing? >> i'm great, thanks. why did you choose to focus on the 26th amendment for your documentary?

>> this was a youth competition but we wanted to pick an amendment that directly related to the use. so we decided that we wanted to go with the youth vote a minute, especially in this year since we'll be in electing our president in november. we wanted something that would empower a lot of people who don't exercise the right to go, to get out to the polls. and basically want to empower youth like ourselves to really them. >> you interviewed the mayor. what did you learn from them? >> from the mayor tim shah, he's the mayor, and he's also a professor of political science. he had a lot to teach us about the actual and and and also about the fact that you've actually don't really know enough yet to make long political decision. we want to channel that you are and you also interviewed to college students. what perspective did they add to

your documentary? >> we interviewed andrew rodriguez who is actually studying political science at rutgers university. he's actually studying the field, made it so that we could use a youth perspective to get that message across. because he was well-versed and yet he also knew, he knew how to relate to the viewers, almost as youth speaking to you. that's why we wanted to make more presentable perspective. using a college student, and it was would agree. we also use someone else who is studying government at harvard university. she also similar to andrew was politically involved. interacted with youth on a daily basis and choose calvinistic president of the future business leaders of america, so she noted when she met with different people, she understood the power that they could have to go and the fact that they need to be educated in order to do this. so they both really fit with their message so we wanted to

convey in the documentary, and they also, they really -- >> what did you learn about the impact youth voters can have on election? >> speaking with tim and andrew, we learned a lot about how close elections have been in the past and how integral youth are nowadays to the election. their turnout is increasing each year, and who are documentary we that difference ultimately. >> what is the most important understanding that you can take away from this experience? >> when making something, anything, a project, a documentary, the power of collaborative effort is enormous. we hadn't really worked together before, and there were three team ever so we had to work as one cohesive unit through creating a documentary, three people can create a well put together project it is amazing to us because it was unlike anything we've done before, just the power i guess with a positive attitude and dedicati

dedication, anybody can create a documentary. >> avika, thank you for taking >> oh, no problem. thank you. is a brief portion of avika's documentary, "our vote, our choice" spent i think that educating the youth level is infinitely important to you know, i definitely, when i interact with youth, i really see the potential, the intelligence, the drive, the passion that they all have. you know, their willingness and initiative to make a difference in this world. and i think by being educated about what is going on in the political scene, they can find new ways to engage with our country and to progress it to be better in future years. i always say they're sort of two great equalizer in life. education and internet. and i think that combining both of those equalizers is the way to go in terms of educating today's body of youth voters. so i think learning more campaigns around using