Boxer Taxpayer Protection Amendment Included in Final Wall Street Reform Bill

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today released a statement after House and Senate negotiators reached final agreement on Wall Street reform legislation, which includes her amendment to end taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street by ensuring that financial firms – not taxpayers – will pay all the costs for cleaning up their own messes.

Senator Boxer said, “Taxpayer protection is a central tenet of Wall Street reform and this amendment guarantees an end to taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street while holding financial firms responsible for their costly mistakes.”

Senator Boxer offered the first Senate amendment to the Wall Street reform legislation – to prohibit any taxpayer funds from bailing out Wall Street. The Senate passed the measure on a 96-1 vote.

She also filed an amendment banning so-called “steering payments” – bonuses given by banks to mortgage brokers to place homeowners in riskier and more costly subprime loans that many families could not afford. She worked closely with the Banking Committee on the final language in the bill, which will ban steering payments and require that lenders confirm a borrower’s ability to repay the loan.

Now that the House-Senate conference committee has agreed on a final version of Wall Street reform legislation, lawmakers from both chambers must give the measure final passage before sending it to President Obama.