Protecting Wall Street
Let’s make no mistake: When Republicans obstruct financial reform legislation, preventing it from even being debated openly on the floor of the Senate for everyone to hear, they are protecting Wall Street from being called to account for its irresponsibility and greed and the damage it has done to the economy as a whole and to millions of individual working people.
That’s just what appears likely to happen later this afternoon, when a vote is scheduled to attempt to break a Republican filibuster not of a Wall Street reform bill but of even talking about it. Instead, Republicans would prefer to keep negotiating secretly for a bill that…does or doesn’t do whatever it is they want.
Senate Republicans are working to finalize their own version of legislation to tighten regulation of the nation’s financial system, and aides said their version could be put forward as a rival to the Democrats’ proposal if a bipartisan deal is not reached before an important procedural vote on Monday afternoon.
Republicans, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, have said they would use the procedural vote to block the start of debate on the Democrats’ bill unless the Democrats agree to make substantial changes in it. But in a political climate of public impatience and anger at Wall Street, it was not clear how long the Republicans could hold ranks in delaying the bill.
Matt Yglesias writes:
But it’s time to put up or shut up. If you’re concerned the bill doesn’t address something, then write an amendment to address it. If you think the bill is too tough in some respect, then write an amendment to weaken it. There’s no good reason to insist that everything be done in a secret Shelby-Dodd negotiating process.
Exactly. If they won’t allow the issues to be aired publicly on CSPAN where anyone can see, if they won’t negotiate, point to things in an actual, public bill and say out loud what they want changed and why, it’s because they’re not acting in good faith. Which, surprise, they aren’t.
Tags: financial reform, Wall Street
Note how the Great Recession caused by Wall Street’s financial collapse is now destroying the governmental services Main Street depends on: transit, schools, unemployment compensation, health care, aid for the elderly and disabled. Note too how the Wall Street Fat Cats have waged war on those Main Street services for the past 75 years. What if — behind all the financial gobbledygook — this crisis is the Fat Cats’ final assault on everything Main Street needs from government? A longtime National Writers Union member, I say a lot more about this in my TypePad blog: http://lorenbliss.typepad.com/loren-bliss-outside-agitators-notebook/2010/04/economic-collapse-capitalist-deathstroke-to-hated-public-services-.html
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