GOP in House call foreclosure settlement plan flawed

“The settlement agreement not only legislates new standards and practices for the servicing industry, it also resuscitates programs and policies that have not worked or that Congress has explicitly rejected,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter dated yesterday to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

State attorneys general and a federal task force have been investigating accusations of flawed paperwork and improper procedures in foreclosures. Officials have been negotiating a settlement with the top mortgage servicers, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Ally Financial Inc.

State and federal officials gave the firms a 27-page settlement “term sheet” last week outlining future rules on mortgage servicing and conditions for possible mortgage modifications. They had previously floated the idea of a $20 billion penalty as part of any deal.

The letter, written by Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, took aim at the consumer bureau, which is scheduled to officially begin work on July 21. Elizabeth Warren, the Treasury and White House adviser charged with setting it up, got the job in September after Christopher Dodd, then head of the Senate Banking Committee, said she could not win the necessary votes for confirmation as its formal director.

In yesterday’s letter, the lawmakers said that since it “does not yet have any regulatory or enforcement authority” the consumer bureau’s role in servicing talks raises “further questions about the process through which the terms of the settlement are being negotiated.”

Garrett, who heads the Financial Services subcommittee on capital markets and the government-sponsored enterprises, was joined by Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the committee’s chairman; Randy Neugebauer of Texas, chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations; and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who heads the finance subcommittee of the House Government Oversight Committee.

Jennifer Howard, a spokeswoman for the consumer bureau, and Andrea Risotto, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tom Miller, the Iowa attorney general who is leading the servicing talks for the states, said on Tuesday that the CFPB should take the lead in enforcing any settlement since it will have jurisdiction over mortgages.

“It makes a lot more sense to have them enforce it from the beginning,” Miller, a Democrat, told reporters in Washington.

If it turns out that the CFPB doesn’t have “direct authority” in federal law to negotiate a settlement, it could codify the deal in a new regulation when it begins official operations in July, Miller said.

Greg Zoeller, the Republican attorney general of Indiana who opposed the bureau’s creation, said the consumer bureau should “circle back and codify” any legal deal with mortgage servicers.

“The concern I have is that you skip the regulatory process” by negotiating a settlement directly with the banks, Zoeller said Tuesday.

State attorneys general of both parties have embraced the CFPB and Warren as a player in the talks, both because it could enforce the deal, and because Warren is a useful point of contact for them, said Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina.

“I think there’s a pretty strong feeling that we need to work with the bureau,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in an interview.

In the letter to Geithner, the Republicans demanded answers to a list of questions on the specific legal authority that the federal government has to negotiate the settlement, and the role of “persons associated with the CFPB” in the talks. They also asked about the legal basis for using money from a settlement to fund principal reductions in mortgages, and how a deal would affect “the safety and soundness” of firms covered by it.