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Sen. Chambliss Falsely Claims Democrats Opposed Subprime Lender Regulations

It seems to me that everyone needs to start spending a bit less time focused on McCain-Obama, and a bit more time on the close Senate races. For example, Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss is up with a new ad trying to link Jim Martin to the congressional Democratic leadership and alleging, among other things, that congressional Democrats have “blocked every effort to regulate subprime lenders.”

This is just made-up nonsense. When the Fed proposed some lax regulations on subprime lenders, Chris Dodd called them inadequate and called for new legislation to put tighter regulations in place. Chuck Schumer offered a bill in March 2007 to regulate subprime lenders. In fact, exactly as you would think it’s conservatives who’ve been blocking regulation, not only opposing federal efforts to crack down on predatory lending, but using federal regulators like the Office of the Comptroller of Currency to prevent states from regulating subprime lenders.

The fact-checking prowess of the local media is often less than it ought to be, but Georgia voters and media outlets need to know that this attack is false.

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UPDATE: Note that in April of this year, Chambliss voted to kill Dick Durbin’s amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to help families facing home foreclosure.