Health care reform suffered the torments of partisan obstruction. Now gird yourself for financial reform and the perils of bipartisan blight.
In health care, lockstep Republican opposition caused months of delay, and empowered the likes of Connecticut's embittered Senator Joe Lieberman and Nebraska's compromised Ben Nelson to exact cankerous concessions to forge a super-majority.
So Washington pundits rail against bitter partisanship. Republican Senator John McCain charges that Obama is to blame for the partisan divide, even though the President wasted months while Max Baucus courted coy Republicans. Senator John Cornyn, the most rabid of Republican obstructionists, damns the partisan process as a reason to oppose the health care bill. This is akin to a gang of thieves lamenting crime in the streets.
Next year, assuming that this health care bill, like a large kidney stone, must eventually be passed, the Congress will turn to financial reform. In the House, Republicans remain in lockstep opposition, providing not one vote for a measure that would take the first steps towards limiting the ability of banks to fleece us again. But in the Senate, we may well witness not the price of partisan rancor, but the blight of bipartisan cooperation.
Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd put forth a strong legislative proposal, one far better than the administration's plan. When the Committee's senior Republican, Alabama's Richard Shelby, scorned that in an extended rant, Dodd decided to pair up Democrats and Republicans on the committee to come up with bipartisan solutions. And now reports suggest that a bipartisan plan may well be unveiled in January, with Dodd pushing for an early vote.
Hold onto your wallets. We don't yet know what is in the bipartisan bill, but we do know what has been kicked to the curb. Shelby announced one price for his cooperation: no new agency to protect consumers from financial fraud or abuse. Want Republican cooperation? Then the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency - with a mandate to police everything from mortgage fraud to preposterous bank overdraft charges - is verboten. Grateful banking lobbyists will insure him a lucrative retirement.
We continue to suffer a pandemic of bank fraud and abuse. In the housing bubble, mortgage companies rewarded brokers for peddling exotic mortgages to customers that the brokers knew couldn't afford them and didn't understand them. Now, banks are raking in record sums from overdraft charges, credit card fees, and preposterous ATM charges. Payday lenders are pocketing the equivalent of 1000% interest from the poorest working people.
The White House has sensibly championed a new agency devoted not to the health of the banks but to the protection of consumers. Already the banking lobby succeeded in weakening the proposal in the partisan House, exempting auto dealers - hell, we know they are honest, right? - and over 90% of all lending institutions, and eliminating the mandate to offer "wonder bread" or plain vanilla loans along with the exotica banks prefer to peddle.
But that was with House Republicans in opposition. In the Senate, the price of bipartisanship is to trash the whole concept. Caveat emptor, baby.
The bipartisan blight is not limited to banking reform. A bipartisan majority is now lining up in the Senate to confirm Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve, without demanding an audit of the Fed's books to review the terms and conditions of the deals he made in shoveling literally trillions in public subsidies and guarantees and swaps to private financial institutions - here and abroad.
Similarly, bipartisan support will be arranged - although with Republicans supplying most of the votes - for the $50 billion supplemental to support the escalation in Afghanistan.
And most pernicious, Senators in both parties are lining up colleagues to support a bipartisan Commission to provide cover for cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Why is bipartisan blight so toxic? Because it generally means that more conservative Democrats will have made common cause with the less rabid reactionaries in the Republican Party. At best, the result reflects the views of powerful entrenched interests that buy into both parties. At worst, it reflects both parties seeking to avoid responsibility for undertaking measures the establishment wants and the vast majority of Americans oppose. The bank bailout stays secreted, while Bernanke gets confirmed. Consumers get ditched. The war gets funded. Seniors take a hit.
Partisan rancor is debilitating; stalemate fatal. But bipartisan accord is too often more affliction than antidote. We'd be far better off getting rid of the Senate filibuster and allowing majorities to rule. Hold them accountable if they fail; re-elect them if they deliver. But don't give a minority the power either to obstruct or to set the price of bipartisan accord.
Conservatives thus want to prove how bad democracy is, how it doesn't work, even as they are the ones making it not work.
Vote out the conservatives GOP and DLC New Dems, Vote for the Under Dogs on the left. Even as the MSM smears them and they suffer for lack of big contributions.
Then get them real citizens reps to pledge to
Outlaw all political contributions.
Bring Democracy to the USA!
The liberals want to destroy democracy with their anarchy and lack of values.
There-how does it feel?
"Historians use the word "conservative" to describe governments and leaders from the earliest recorded times, but it was not until the Age of Enlightenment, and the reaction to events surrounding the French Revolution of 1789, that modern conservatism rose as a distinct political attitude or train of thought. Many point to the rise of a conservative disposition in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, specifically to the works of influential Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, emphasizing moderation in the political balancing of interests towards the goals of social harmony and common good. Edmund Burke's polemic Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) helped conservatism gain prominence. Edmund Burke opposed the French Revolution, which he saw as violent and chaotic."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
To "conserve" the monarchy and hierarchical society.
The goal of being in Congress isn't to compromise, it's to write good legislation. Republcans oppose that by their very own stated goals. They don't care about America, don't care that we are at war, and don't care that Americans are out of work and/or don't have access to health care.
So since Republicans have demonstrated a refusal to operate in the best interests of the country, anything they have to say should be ignored. It's called being held accountable.
Look at the Sara Palin silliness, this woman, who I do not like, but she has been demonized by the left (I get so sick of watching Obberman play clips of right wing crazies all night, but that is part of the divide and conquer game) and conversely been made a saint by the right. Both sides are being played, and Palin is just a tool.
If our choice is to have a bill nobody likes, or have a bill only conservatives hate... I'll gladly take the latter. And as always, it would be better for America, because the things conservatives love are always bad for America.
But I'm truly happy the teabagger party is living in denial. They'll get served up a steaming heap of defeat in yet another election.
Stay The Course!
Congress must stop dedicating the nation's financial resources to enemies of the United States.
Political / corporate elites supervise the depredation of the population's economy.
We have never appreciated the accomplishments and promise of this great nation; we are about to lose it all.
Our political leadership urged on by the citizenry must surmount their personal passions that create treason.
Rescuing the United States is the Only Cause that will serve humanity; " the temple of liberty and beacon of hope for all mankind."
My plan has simple rules:
Only individuals can contribute to election campaigns.
No PACs or corporations or industry groups – not even the ones I like personally.
These rules apply to any elected office from sewage commissioner to president.
A strict annual cap on total contributions - say $1,000 per person.
These rules would be backed up by a new class of felony – crimes against democracy.
Any takers?
Republicans are loathe to do anything that might make Obama look good, and they are already in bed with the titans who cratered our economy in 2008, so any idea that one Hill Republican will be on board is illusory.
Lieberman and Dodd effectively override Clinton's reforms in the late 1990s that would have prevented that Arthur Anderson/Enron scandal, so you actually think Lieberman will do anything to prevent another economic collapse.
The US has become ungovernable because Reid will not impose any party discipline and go around the 60-vote rule, and Obama will not back him up even if he tried.