Chamber Opposes Obama Plan

We already knew the big credit card issuers weren’t going to be too crazy about the Obama administration’s proposed new financial consumer protection agency.

Turns out, the opposition to the proposed agency that could oversee everything from mortgages to credit cards has a lot more enemies than just the bankers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending at least $2 million to run advertising opposed to the agency, a centerpiece of financial reforms proposed by the administration, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Chamber’s ads, predictably, don’t focus on the poor, put-upon credit card issuer.

Instead, call their first main character Joe the butcher. Since Joe extends credit to customers, he’ll be subject to intrusive government regulation, the chamber is set to argue in its ads.

"We want to go beyond the usual suspects to show how overreaching this is," Amanda Engstrom, a Chamber senior vice president who came up with the lobbying and advertising campaign, told the Journal.

One supporter of legislation to create a financial consumer protection agency, Sen. Chris Dodd, thinks the Chamber’s wasting its money. "The public doesn't believe that there was too much consumer protection," said Kirstin Brost, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee.