Eisenberg praised colleagues working at the CFPB, which he had come to know from a joint project that Pentagon FCU has with the agency to develop a prototype credit card disclosure statement. He emphasized that the agency staff considered themselves to be working for consumers alone with little regard to other concerns.

"The people at the CFPB are intelligent, professional and very goodhearted," Eisenberg told conference attendees.  "But they take the agency's unofficial motto of 'know before you owe' very seriously and only consider the consumer.  It's not about you for them, it's about the consumer."

If the single-minded focus meant that many smaller credit unions and community banks may have to get out the housing finance business because they can't afford to meet the compliance costs, he doubted the agency would care.

McKechnie urged credit unions approaching the CFPB with concerns about regulations to never approach with only a complaint, but instead, to always have an option ready to suggest. 

"It's always better to be able to say, 'you want to attain this goal, have you considered this approach or this strategy,'" he said.

McKechnie also advised getting involved directly, saying that lobbying from the men and women who must daily work under the burden of a regulation carried more weight with regulators than testimony or letters from CEOs, lawyers or lobbyists.

Blanchard agreed, noting that both regulators and legislators loved hearing from people who have direct organizational experience of a given problem or regulation.

On secondary market reform, Blanchard told credit unions to organize themselves to come to a determination of what it is they want to make sure they persevere in secondary market reform.

"If we can organize and come together, we can bring some real weight to the discussion," Blanchard said. "But if they can pick us off one by one, that's what they are going to do."

Credit unions needed to put a premium on being part of the discussion, McKechnie said. He recalled a favored saying about lobbying: "if you don't have a place at the table, you're on the menu."

Eisenberg said that his years of observation of political and regulatory lobbying efforts  led him to believe the most effective lobbying efforts were personal and face to face and had staff in Washington to help prepared the ground before lobbying meetings.