Government Regulation

President Obama, pushing a key part of his overhaul of financial regulations, sent to Congress a draft bill that would create the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which he said would better protect Americans from unscrupulous practices and make financial products easier to understand. Under the 152-page bill released Tuesday, the new agency would bring together what the administration called the "fragmented" system of responsibility for consumer protection.

The nation's cruise ship industry, in a turnaround from its long-standing position that no additional government oversight is needed, endorsed proposed federal safety legislation Monday, paving the way for increased security measures on cruise ships. Cruise Lines International Assn., the industry's chief lobbying and advocacy organization representing 24 member cruise lines, sent a letter of support to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), one of the bill's sponsors.

What's on Congress' to-do list The Senate left town Friday for its August recess, a week after the House. Both chambers are scheduled to reconvene Sept. 8. When the lawmakers return, a proposed overhaul of the nation's healthcare system will be just one of the weighty matters on their agenda. Here is a look at the status of several measures before Congress. Healthcare reform President Obama's effort to expand and improve insurance coverage is likely to dominate Capitol Hill for most of the fall.

Officials on Monday unveiled a federal bill that would create national standards and accountability for gang intervention workers as part of a Los Angeles-based effort to professionalize the growing and controversial field. The bill, which was introduced by U.S. Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), is the first such national initiative to regulate intervention workers who act as liaisons between law enforcement and communities. Police and intervention workers have a long history of distrust, but authorities have come to rely on intervention workers for such matters as monitoring street gossip and preventing retaliatory shootings.

Despite the governor's pledge to better discipline errant health professionals there are signs that it will be difficult to enact sweeping changes as quickly or easily as the administration has suggested. At meetings in Sacramento on Monday and last week, regulators and state attorneys generally spoke of the need for reform but picked apart potential solutions presented to them. They offered no concrete time frames for having a workable system in place. Even officials within the same agency couldn't agree on solutions.

A year after the demise of legendary Wall Street investment bank Lehman Bros., calls for far-reaching reforms to rein in the financial industry's excesses remain unanswered -- and may be stymied by increasing signs of a budding economic recovery. President Obama is headed today to Founders Hall on Wall Street, steps from the heart of the business world, to try to reignite support for his proposed overhaul of financial regulations. The legislation would permanently expand Washington's role in overseeing the financial system by creating a new agency to protect consumers, reining in the dark world of derivatives and giving government officials the ability to seize and dismantle large companies whose failures could be catastrophic.

Millions of consumers got burned in the meltdown of the mortgage market. Yet the financial services industry remains adamantly opposed to President Obama's proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, intended to streamline and strengthen safeguards for the little guy. The proposed watchdog would oversee mortgages and other consumer loans and would ensure that financial institutions comply with all relevant laws -- some parental supervision that...

New rules proposed by the nation's chief communications regulator to ensure unfettered access to the Internet would level the online playing field as more people surf the Web on mobile devices, but the plan has wireless carriers in an uproar. Monday's proposal by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski would ensure that consumers would be able to get whatever content they want on the Internet and to use any service they want. But the telecommunications and the cable companies that control both land-line and wireless access to the Internet argue that some customers who download large amounts of data, such as a continuous flow of movies, can jam their networks.

In the drive to bring health coverage to almost every American, lawmakers have largely rejected restrictions on how much insurers can charge, sparking fears that consumers will continue to face the skyrocketing premium increases of recent years. The legislators' reluctance to control premium costs comes despite the fact that they intend to require virtually all Americans to get health insurance, an unprecedented mandate -- long sought by insurance companies -- that would mark the first time the federal government has compelled consumers to buy a single industry's product, effectively creating a captive market.

New efforts are underway in Sacramento to regulate how investors buy and sell existing life insurance policies, a practice that critics contend allows speculators to make money by wagering on when a person will die. Currently, an estimated $27 trillion worth of life insurance is in force, most of it to provide financial security for survivors. But in recent years, older Americans have increasingly been selling their policies for cash to investors who see an opportunity for profit as they take over the premium payments and then collect proceeds when people die. Sales of these policies to investors and the packaging of them into larger investments have grown from a few billion dollars a decade ago to over $13 billion in 2006, according to a state report.