by Brad Peck

From Bloomberg:

Robert Bray, who employs 12 people at five dental offices in and around Atlantic City, New Jersey, doesn’t want Congress mentioning him in the same breath as Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. Bray is worried that orthodontists may be subject to new consumer-protection rules that Congress is drafting for banks because their practices allow patients getting braces to pay over time. That would mean costly new regulations that might discourage orthodontists from extending credit. "Orthodontists did not cause this financial crisis, and we should not be a part of this in any way," said Bray, former head of the American Association of Orthodontists in St. Louis. Bray, 61, and fellow orthodontists brought that message to Capitol Hill this week, telling lawmakers that industries far from Wall Street may be hurt because the regulations will be written so broadly.

The Senate is debating the biggest financial-regulations overhaul since the Great Depression, focusing mainly on firms such as New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Among other provisions, the legislation would create a consumer-protection bureau and bolster derivatives oversight. The House passed its version last year..."There is a long history of unintended consequences of regulation," said Barry Mitnick, a professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh. He cited the old Interstate Commerce Commission, initially created to protect shippers from railroads, and later used to protect the railroads against competitors.

...Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said he isn’t targeting "the local grocer" with consumer-protection language. "You have to be in the business of financial services or products to be affected," he said on the Senate floor last week. "We took care of those dentists and others who were worried." The bill says it intends for the consumer bureau to protect Americans against financial-services abuses. It says the provision doesn’t apply to "a merchant, retailer, or seller of nonfinancial goods or services that is not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer financial products or services."

Critics such as the Senate Banking Committee’s top Republican, Richard Shelby of Alabama, say one problem is "significantly" isn’t defined...Until final legislation is passed, one concern for many groups is the language is so sweeping that they can’t be sure whether they’re affected.

Or in other words, we have to wait until the bill passes to find out what's in it. That worked out so well for health care -- maybe we should trying fixing this one before it passes.