Politics & Government

Congressman Barney Frank to Speak in Weston

Frank will speak at Weston Middle School on April 2.

The following information is from the Weston Democratic Town Committee:

Congressman Barney Frank will speak in Weston on Monday, April 2, at 7 p.m. at the Amy Potter Center, , 456 Wellesley St. This event is co-sponsored by the Weston, Concord, Lincoln, Natick, Newton, Sudbury, Waltham, Wayland and Wellesley Democratic Committees.

Congressman Frank is the ranking Democrat of the House Financial Services Committee and co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Congress enacted Dodd-Frank in 2010 to address practices and abuses that led to the catastrophic Wall Street crisis of 2008 and devastated the U.S. economy.

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Key provisions of Dodd-Frank keep lenders from making risky loans. The Act requires mortgage lenders to bear some of the financial risk for extending loans to home buyers. Frank stresses the importance of this skin-in-the game requirement: "All the other problems we had… [were] centered on the system of selling to other people loans that shouldn’t have been made in the first place."

Congressman Frank is a strong advocate of reducing excessive military spending in fighting the deficit. At a recent talk at the Harvard Institute of Politics he said: "There’s going to be serious deficit reduction. If the military’s exempted from any further deficit reduction, our capacity to provide for the quality of life in the United States — for better education, for better infrastructure, for environmental cleanup, for decent medical care — will be, in turn, diminished. And the diminution of that will lead to further loss of confidence in the government."

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"We spend far more on the military than on Medicare," Frank said. Frank added that military spending exceeded funds spent on Medicaid, housing aid, local law enforcement and other departments that fall within the discretionary budget.

Congressman Frank began his elected career in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 and ever since has been re-elected by wide margins. 


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