Last week, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule, “I mean it really is a change of forms.”
That change of forms has reached the highest levels of government. The White House on Tuesday night issued a statement of administration policy that the president would veto a House bill that would institute a safe harbor from enforcement until Feb. 1, 2016, for companies who are making good-faith efforts to comply with TRID.
Undaunted, the House voted 303-121 Wednesday to approve the bill and send it on to the Senate.
Much of the two hours of floor debate on the issue centered around Democrats' inability to get an amendment from Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters to a vote, either in the rules committee or on the floor. Waters and other Democrats were concerned that the addition of the safe harbor from litigation limited a private right of action during the safe harbor period.
"What is unfortunate about this legislation," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who took the floor during the final comment period, "is that in taking that goodwill and turning it into a bill, what Republicans decided to do is take away the right of private action for a consumer."
Republicans said that the safe harbor only applied to companies who made good-faith compliance efforts and did not limit consumers' right to bring litigation against bad actors who tried to deceive or harm consumers during the four-month grace period.
"Mr. Cordray could have provided this certainty," said bill sponsor French Hill (R-Ark.). "Statements like 'the industry can read between the lines' does not constitute certainty. It certainly doesn't work in the real world. ... This is more complicated than it looks."
The Title Report will have full coverage of the passage on Friday, along with comments from the House floor debate and the potential for passage in the Senate.