It’s interesting that Specter showed up to vote for cloture on the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 but then blew off the manager’s amendment and the vote on final passage. I mean, this was an historic vote. But I guess the really historic vote is on the Conference Report with the House, so Specter can still get a second bite at the apple. The bill passed 59-39, which Republicans Chuck Grassley, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe voting ‘aye.’ The Republicans continue to exceed even my dismal expectations for bad behavior. It’s incredible that these creeps brought the global economy to its knees and they not only oppose reforming the system but they evidently do not think they will pay any price at the polls. I wonder if the people of North Carolina are going to be impressed with Richard Burr’s position on reforming Wall Street.
Obama will probably sign the final bill right before the July 4th recess. Then he’ll watch the Senate confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Health Care…Wall Street reform…Supreme Court confirmation…win…win…win. It still doesn’t pay to bet against Obama.
It’s a “win”, but let’s be honest…this is pretty weak reform when we’re talking about a response to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. The Volker Rule wasn’t even debated. Too Big To Fail wasn’t addressed. The tough derivatives language is expected to be pulled out during committee. I don’t think they did anything with pay-day loan sharks, er, I mean lenders.
There was so much more that COULD have been done. And I’m normally the guy that complains to other progressives that making that arguement is stupid. But in this case it’s totally valid. They had the GOP by the balls on this one. They could have added in the Volker rule, pay-day lender stuff, and too big to fail, and they would have still been able to pass it with Snowe, Collins, and Brown.
I was thrilled by HCR, even though I would have liked more, I felt it was the best we could get given the way things worked out. But in this case, it could have easily been better. They didn’t want to push to the limit like they did with HCR, so instead they played it safe. Safe isn’t a valid response to the economic hurricane that came ashore a year and half ago.
I’m glad it passed, as there are some good things about it. There could have been much, MUCH more done, though. And there could have been much, MUCH more done, and still had pretty great odds of passage.
I see things about the opposite. The health care bill did something spectacular for the lower class. It created massive subsidies for access to health care. That was fantastic, but the bill failed to change an immoral system that has perverse fee for service and unnecessary insurance profits wrapped up in it. Major progressive win, major ideological loss.
With the financial reforms, the reforms could have been stronger if we didn’t have more than twenty banking-friendly Dems, but we do. We simply didn’t have the votes in our own caucus to hold together some of the stronger reforms. But we won the ideological battle. We’re moving away from the Reagan Revolution as a matter of policy and principle. So, passing this now didn’t interfere with more reforms later, as happened with health care.
Overall, I am happier with this bill than the piece of shit health care bill.
I’m in no position to assess whether financial reform or health care reform is more progressive. But not only does it not pay to bet against Obama on any particular issue, look at the larger trend.
Legislatively, this is shaping up to be one of the three or four most productive Congresses in the last 80 years: Recovery Act, Affordable Care Act, Financial Reform are just the highlights, and let’s remember, all sorts of progressive goodies that would have been major bills in their own right were wrapped into the Recovery Act.
Judicially, two Supreme Court justices who—regardless of whether they were the justices you would have chosen—are/will be formidable (mostly) progressive allies on what looks to be a 5-4 Court for the next few years (at least).
Administratively, rebuilding (from the tattered ruins in which Bush left it) the federal government’s capacity to carry out its responsibilities under law—EPA, OSHA, FDA, NLRB, etc. I would include in this the beginnings of the return of accountability for failure: the resignation of Dennis Blair yesterday, the start of the Minerals Management Service purge.
To continue the metaphor, not only is the US a really big ship of state, Bush was driving it towards the shoals at an alarmingly high rate of speed. Given the situation Obama inherited, he’s going to continue to make mistakes, cut corners (e.g., reappointing Bernanke as Fed chairman rather than fighting for say, Janet Yellen), and make compromises that we progressives won’t like. And that’s not even counting the cases when his views (and the country’s) are simply more centrist than we’d like.
Despite all that, for the first time in a generation we may be (especially if the Dems limit their losses this fall) on the verge of breaking out of the “America is a center-right nation” political narrative. That’s no small accomplishment for a guy who ten years ago was trying to get invited to poker games with the power brokers of the Illinois State Senate.
Hmmm. On HCR, I don’t disagree that we lost the argument over this particular bill. The long view, however, has been changed forever. It’s now engrained in American society that everyone should have health insurance. Future debates will be over the COST of that health insurance…and we both know single-payer will win that battle with time. A German system (public-private hybrid) would be a fine goal to reach, and it seems to be the path we’re on now. I’d agree that it was a major progressive win, but also a minor ideological win in the long run.
For WSR, we could have made it stronger, even with those bank-friendly Dems. We had a pair of Dems vote against the bill’s cloture. So there was still horsetrading that could have been done. I’d trade Nelson’s vote for Cantwell’s any day. I’d rather see Feingold voting for it than Lincoln. It was going to take a LOT of movement to the left to keep Collins/Snowe from voting for this thing. Adding in one or two more reforms wouldn’t have stopped this from passing.
I do agree it’s an ideological win, and we ARE moving away from Reganomics. But we had the opportunity, and the nessecesity, to take some big steps away from it. Instead, they chose to tip toe. Again, it’s a progressive and idealogical win – in this case a minor progressive and solid idealogical one. I am happy that it passed, don’t get me wrong. Something IS better than nothing, and it DOES move the ball in the right direction. However, unlike HCR…WSR was primed to be major wins on both policy and message. But they didn’t even try.
Lastly…I think I should say I totally agree with this statement:
“Obama will probably sign the final bill right before the July 4th recess. Then he’ll watch the Senate confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Health Care…Wall Street reform…Supreme Court confirmation…win…win…win. It still doesn’t pay to bet against Obama.”
It’s becoming clearer and clearer as the days go on, that Barack Obama will go down as one of the most transformative Presidents in the history of this country. If he keeps up this pace for another 7 years, he’ll rival FDR, who had 3+ terms.
We actually have the votes for Merkely-Levin (Volcker Rule) we just need to bring it up for a vote.
Glad to see another important bill get passed. Like health care it doesn’t have everything but it does have some huge consumer protection that is long overdue.
I’m also pretty jazzed to see that Grassley voted for it. I volunteered at an Obama OFA office and made a bunch of calls to Iowa voters to ask them to call Grassley to tell him to vote for it. I’d like to think that all those calls we made might have made a difference. It was pretty cool that a good 75% of the people I spoke to said words to the effect of “oh sure, I’ll call his office! I’m not sure it will make any difference as he has turned out to be quite the squirrel lately but I’ll call as he deserves to hear from us” OFA continues to use smart strategy to get the puck across the goal line. And speaking of goal lines, GO BLACKHAWKS!!!
Thanks for working with OFA. That’s where the real action is. This blogging stuff is for blowhards.
I’m still waiting for the final package to judge its effectiveness. From what I currently gather, there’s still much to be desired regarding TBTF. Cantwell’s crusade about the derivatives loophole doesn’t seem to be delved in anything of actual importance, although I don’t see any reason why the language can’t be clarified to what she wants (it won’t change anything, but clarification never hurt anyone, right?).
Hmmm, Politico says that I’m wrong:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37569.html
This is exactly what was needed. I’m not sure if it was structured properly, though.
If it was, and if this was indeed included, we’ve solved TBTF.
Good show, Obama.
It’s good. I know.
Sorry, I’m getting increasing down on Obama over the administration’s response to the oil spill. I care about the Gulf, if that matters.
The first week, it wasn’t clear at first that any oil would leak, and the focus on was the immediate loss of life. Understandable. Made sense to downplay the story and not cause panic before the crisis became clear. But we’re long past that point now, and I feel like the press and Congress are having to pull teeth to get the administration to take on its responsibilities.
We’ve known for weeks that the geyser is going faster than 5000 barrels per day. Yet Lubchenco was defending that number as recently as a few days ago, and only today is Salazar saying they’ll get an independent measurement. Only took a freakin’ month to decide to assess the disaster.
Industry insiders at NOLA were posting that there are less toxic alternatives to the dispersant BP chose (Corexit), and that Corexit is banned near British shores on the day BP started using it. The EPA got around to telling BP to change dispersants Wednesday evening, millions of gallons of dispersant later. Into the Gulf at all levels.
The only research ship to investigate the spill found huge plumes of oil underwater. Lubchenco’s response? We don’t know it’s oil. Interviewer asked what else it could be, she goes off about how all the data needs to be analyzed. No alternative hypothesis proposed.
Obama went to Louisiana only when criticized for not doing so – and when they got off the plane, Gibbs bragged about how he’d been briefed on the way there about “possible scenarios.” No one thought to tell the Pres that this thing is on top of an enormous, high pressure reservoir blowing uncontrollably near ecologically sensitive coast and the Gulf Stream – for a week?
I just get no sense of urgency from the administration at all about this, except to assure us BP will have to pay for it. I DON”T CARE who pays for it – save the Gulf, dammit!
Sorry for rant, but this is really, really, really bad. And if I’m mad, I can’t imagine how the Obama-unfriendly populace in Louisiana is feeling about now.
you know, the conservatives have been calling it Obama’s Katrina, and I disagreed until yesterday.
Now i’m really really angry. I read that CBS news showed up on the LA shore to document and report on the mess, and the coast guard showed up and told them to leave or face arrest. When the reporters objected, the CG told them “they were only following BP’s rules”.
Since when does BP own the LA coastline and the Gulf?
Meanwhile, the US Govt has put a no-fly zone over the area where the slick is (this has been documented several times at DKos, and occasional BMT contributor Richard Blair has links). All the better to not see the slick.
And then last week the President staged a “get angry” moment (i say staged, because they made an announcement the night before to the Atlantic, “expect to see an angry Obama tomorrow”): this has gone on for a fucking month.
So yeah, now it’s his Katrina.
What I’d like to know is why Salazaar didn’t do more to clean up DoI in the past year, rather than wait for an environmental catastrophe to initiate reform. He has made a few good decisions. For example, mineral exploration in the West cannot sidestep NEPA and the EIS process. But the whole offshore thing has been a disaster and the Obama administration was complicit. And may still be.
Same with MMS, which has only been broken up since the disaster. The scandal about MMS, payoffs, sex and drugs came out well before Obama was elected.
Booman sees all these wins for the president. i don’t see so many wins for actual Americans yet.
i think in many ways our institutions, all of them, have failed, and that as the gulf disaster gets worse and worse there’s going to be conflict.
MMS is part of Dept of the Interior
I agree that Obama’s response has been inadequate. I see little leadership on this. I suspect part of the problem is that in his seeming desire to always try to somehow placate every side of a debate, his reversal on offshore drilling came back to give him a big old bite on the ass. And, unfortunately, I suspect that they’re unsure how to proceed since this debacle could destroy any chance of watered-down climate change legislation.
Another huge part of the problem is that this disaster has exposed the simply incredible “we’ll take your word for it” regulation of offshore drilling, combined with the policy of “requiring” the spilling company to manage the oil response (since, of course, government has no response plan of its own, and somehow trusts the criminals to administer to the assaulted ecosystem). BP filed some laughable horseshit about how they could handle a spill of 12 million gallons a day. Which basically meant they could lay a lot of boom and spray dispersants on it. Setting aside the concept of offshore drilling on its own, the disaster, at a bare minimum, must lead to a completely different regulatory regime, one where basic safety protocols aren’t discarded on the spur of the moment by pressured middle-managers, where government regulators aren’t rubber-stamping cronies in bed with industry, where the government has strict and respectable enforcement mechanisms, and where, for god sakes, the industry does not get to decide how to respond to it’s own messes. Because if we settle for Rand Paul’s “accidents happen” attitude, we deserve to see our coastline turn into a dumping ground for industrial waste. If Obama at the very least does not achieve these things then he is an accessory to environmental crimes of the highest order.
The government and Navy don’t have the equipment or expertise to fix a problem with an oil well a mile below the surface. Period. We’re stuck with BP down there.
On the surface, I think the response has been basically adequate if a little glitchy. There were some frustrating delays, but fortunately the weather kept the oil offshore long enough to get those straightened out.
My real problem is the administration’s complicity in denying the extent of this thing, and their slow-footedness on the dispersal problem. We should have had an independent assessment of the flow rate by the second week; and if BP wouldn’t provide the video, the WH should have been clear that any assessment was from BP alone. I don’t understand what interest the administration has in making this look smaller than it is, and I don’t care. It needs to stop.
“The government and Navy don’t have the equipment or expertise to fix a problem with an oil well a mile below the surface. Period. We’re stuck with BP down there.”
The point is, that shouldn’t be the situation. It’s not Obama’s fault if that was the situation, but it will be if it remains the situation. Because that fact is that-and this is the MOST important point-BP itself DOES NOT HAVE “the equipment or the expertise to fix a problem with an oil well a mile below the surface”. As I pointed out, the response plan BP submitted could not constitute a reasonable mitigation/containment response to any reasonable person, and their actions so far have consisted PRIMARILY in denying and obfuscating the severity of the problem. Oil will be washing ashore in the gulf basin for years if not decades because of this egregious example of corporate greed.
And if people say, well, it’s a mile deep, solutions are hard, then we need to have the discussion of why we are risking such catastrophic failures. We need to tell all the Landrieu’s of the world to shut their pie holes, because in fact then we DO NOT have the technology to safely drill in this region. To say we have 2000 wells that didn’t fail is like saying we have 2000 nuclear warheads that didn’t spontaneously explode (until one did). It’s morally vacant non-logic. Our world is fucked if the corporate answer to everything is essentially “we’ll all hope for the best” and “Accidents happen”.
“Accidents happen” is the naked sophistry of industry which seeks to reduce to zero it’s overhead of regulatory compliance to maximize short term profits. The cost of “accidents” that harm the public welfare can then be externalized as socialized “loss” or debt.
I’d prefer to see the administration saying we won’t drill again at these depths until we have the technical capability to handle a problem of this magnitude. I’m patient on this kind of thing – they’ve said they’ll analyze this before approving new drilling, and Obama doesn’t turn on a dime before the data is in. It’s one of the things I like about him.
However, my main focus right now is the disaster we have on hand. The oil companies are just way, way ahead of the government and Navy in their technical prowess at these depths. That situation is not going to change in the days or weeks or months it will take to get this stopped (fingers crossed for this weekend…), and so we’re reliant on BP to fix it.
I’m not trying to advocate future policy in saying that, just trying to acknowledge reality.
“The oil companies are just way, way ahead of the government and Navy in their technical prowess at these depths.”
Rachel, the well has been gushing unabated for three weeks. It’s possible 60 million gallons have already been released. BP has done nothing of any significance to stop it, unless you count dumping a half million gallons of toxic dispersants on top of it, which may well be worse than the problem. I know they’ve tried various things, but nothing has worked. Failure doesn’t count as a technical advantage. As far as I know the rest of their response consists in booms, skimmers, and spraying (as outlines in their response plan), something I’m sure the government could handle or at least manage. Oil is currently washing ashore along 20+ miles of the Louisiana coast. So basically, BP hardly can be said to even have a response capability, short of drilling another well (which takes 3 months, at which point well more than 100 MILLION gallons of oil could have been released).
BP is the one with deep-sea robots that can work around the well, and the operators trained to make them go. Clearly BP is not prepared for this, but the government can’t even get down there.
“As far as I know the rest of their response consists in booms, skimmers, and spraying (as outlines in their response plan), something I’m sure the government could handle or at least manage.”
Right, I think the Coast Guard and fishers are playing a big part in the surface response. I agree, there’s no reason the government can’t take over on the surface.
I mean, I don’t see any technical reason the government can’t take over.
Legally, there seems to be a quagmire I don’t understand.
Provisions for “too big to fail” and “naked swaps” are likely to appear in other legislation before this is all done. Will this happen before November? I don’t know, but both of these would make good wedge issues if the Democratic candidate (1) would support them and (2) explain them clearly to voters as to what happened, what these provisions are and why they matter.
But some progressive told me Obama was just like Bush and was selling us out?
So you’re telling me that was shinola as well?
Hmmmm.
(Terrible attempt at snark/ but alas I had to try)
Considering he started pushing against the Volcker Rule after he supported it? That’s pretty bad.
How did he push against the Volcker Rule? Merkley-Levin is weak sauce from where I’m reading. Why should we fight for a weak version of it that banks can easily get around?
While this bill is better than nothing, I’m troubled that two of the most liberal and principled Democrats in the Senate, Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell, voted AGAINST it because they thought it was too weak. Good for them, that’s political courage to buck their own president and their majority leader for what is right.
It will also be interesting to see if Blanche Lincoln’s proposal will be tossed out in conference. I suspect it will and that she offered it only as a public relations move in her campaign against Halter. She got good press from it but now, it will die.