Last week, the Chamber of Commerce announced that it will “vigorously oppose” a new consumer protection agency proposed as part of the Obama administration’s regulatory reform package. But that’s evidently not the only way in which the Chamber is out to influence the debate over the changes facing Wall Street.

Yesterday, the Chamber laid out its opposition to a change — backed by the administration and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) — that would allow shareholders to vote on their company’s executive compensation practices, so called “say on pay”:

Opponents of an effort to give shareholders greater rights are centering their attacks on organized labor, arguing that unions are pushing such proposals to bolster their ranks and boost their declining pension funds.

“Big labor unions are trying to achieve at the board table what they cannot achieve at the negotiating table, under the guise of shareholder protection,” said David Hirchsmann, president of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.

So the Chamber opposes the Employee Free Choice Act because it wants to “save the secret ballot,” while also opposing “say on pay,” which would guarantee that shareholders can hold a non-binding vote on their company’s executive pay packages. Isn’t it convenient that the Chamber only thinks voting is important when Big Business can set the rules?

But “say on pay” is really about injecting some sanity back into corporate governance. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said, “[say on pay] has already become the norm for several of our major trading partners.” In two of those countries — Great Britain and Australia — CEO pay “grew 2.4 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, from 2002 through 2006, while pay in the United States soared 59.9 percent in the same period.”

Some companies in the U.S., including Aflac Co., voluntarily undertake such votes already. “We want people to look at us and say, ‘Here’s a company that will even let you vote!’” said Aflac CEO Daniel Amos. “It’s symbolic, but it’s an important symbol.”

And that’s just the thing: the vote is non-binding, leading some to say that it doesn’t go far enough toward reining in Wall Street excess. As Dean Baker explained:

The current rules allow management insiders to make out like bandits at the expense of shareholders and other stakeholders. This is why clowns get paid tens of millions to run their companies into the ground in the US…Obama’s proposals do not go nearly far enough in taking back power from the insiders. We should have binding shareholder votes on compensation in which unreturned proxies don’t count.

So in the end, “say on pay” is simply an attempt to get some sense of balance back into corporate governance, and to start holding executives accountable to someone other than themselves.

Today, the House Financial Services committee held the first in a series of hearings regarding financial regulatory reform and restructuring. Today’s topic was the new consumer protection agency that the Obama administration has proposed. During the hearing, House Republicans were adamant about their belief that the agency is intended to make us “yield our freedom” to “philosopher kings” who will dictate what consumers can and cannot buy, while forcing banks to lend to poor people. Some examples:

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX): An unelected bureaucrat will now decide for us what mortgages we can have. They will decide what bank accounts we can open. They may even decide whether or not we can be trusted with a credit card.

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ): I don’t believe that creating more government agencies, perhaps those even with an Orwellian, heavy handed, government bureaucrat knows best mentality…is an appropriate solution.

Watch a compilation:

Incidentally, this is exactly how the mortgage and banking industries want the new agency to be characterized. When the administration’s plan was first released, the American Bankers Association (ABA) immediately claimed that it “needlessly rips apart all the existing regulatory agencies, eliminates charter choices and creates a new agency with powers to mandate loans and services that go well beyond consumer protection.” And today, ABA President and CEO Edward Yingling was on Capitol Hill, singing the same song:

[The agency] imposes government designed one-size-fits-all products – so-called plain vanilla products – over services that are designed for an increasingly diverse customer base…ABA believes the answer is not to have the government design products, mandate that they be offered, and give them an advantage over private sector products.

As it was put at Oxdown Gazette, “I hope all of you will provide examples of the way all that lovely financial innovation has helped you. Extra points for the people who were helped by credit default swaps.”

The new agency is actually meant to ensure that financial disclosure forms are clear and fair, that there are no gaps in the regulatory framework when it comes to existing consumer protections, and most importantly, to have an agency that is solely focused on consumer protection, instead of making it something that a bunch of agencies devote some of their time to. With their stance, House Republicans are endorsing the view of the banking and mortgage lobbyists, who want to maintain the same haphazard, almost non-existent regulation that led us down the subprime road the first time.