Senate banking Chairman Sen. Christopher J. Dodd will try to strike a delicate balance Monday as he introduces a new measure to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system, including provisions aimed at shoring up support among fellow Democrats but also incorporating compromises he reached with Republicans.
“It’s a bit of a high-wire act,” Dodd (Conn.) said in an interview Sunday.
Staff members labored throughout the weekend to piece together the far-reaching legislation, trying to find language that would please Democrats on Dodd’s committee but would preserve the hope of eventually winning GOP support.
If you want to skip to the end of this story, Dodd will score precisely zero Republican votes for this bill. The Democratic base will justifiably hate the bill for compromising away every meaningful provision and Republicans will use the watered-down final draft to attack Democrats as chummy with banksters. You would expect Chris Dodd to figure out to this lose-lose-lose game by now.
Then again, maybe Dodd knows perfectly well what he is doing. It all depends on where he wants to work next.
The Grand Panjandrum
As much as I hate to say it: This.
DBrown
Uh, John, you can’t see the the forest for the trees; the asshole Dodd does not really want a strong bill – his payoff is already in the mail. Using the repub-a-thugs as blame is the perfect cover to do the dirty work that the banks demand. That’s my take.
Paris
maybe Dodd knows perfectly well what he is doing
Yes, covering the asses of the corporate dems by blaiming the republicans. What a bunch of dishonest tools.
Walker
Like Schumer, Dodd was a pawn of the banking industry for many, many years. I am not impressed by this feeble attempt to rehabilitate himself.
Mike Kay
Seems like only yesterday when the blogging elite were kissing Dodd’s feet.
Violet
Dodd can’t get out of there fast enough for me. I’m sure his cushy lobbying job is already lined up and waiting for him.
Our Congresspeople should have to wear the logos of the corporations and other entities they’re beholden to, just like the NASCAR racers do. I want to see a giant “Countrywide” logo plastered across Dodd’s chest every time he steps up to a microphone.
Tom Hilton
Eternal Sunshine or Memento? I lean toward the latter.
Zifnab
Fix’d. You can never be too chummy with banksters in the GOP, and the Republicans have come off their rhetorical assaults on the banks when they started risking actual action on the issue.
Likely, we’ll hear another round of “This was all the result of onerous government regulation!” and “I blame social security and taxes!” from the party of Beck.
IndieTarheel
@Walker: Yup. This will only work on people with an IQ under 50 and the attention span of a walnut.
__
Oh shit.
SteveinSC
I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Sort of “please brer Fox don’t throw me into the briar patch.” Democrats bring forth some action that appears to comport with the mandate they were given: Close Gitmo, health care reform, banking reform, etc. Naturally we need GOP support for bipartisanship and all. The Dems offer concession after concession to republicans, which are incorporated into the bill to get this nonexistent support. The republicans stonewall the initiative but the concessions remain in the bill. The bill goes forward with all those “bipartisan” elements, wink, wink, know what I mean?, know what I mean? The initiative is gutted and the Dem gets re-elected with the support of whomever wanted the gutting.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Zifnab: Heh. And if they don’t get a bill passed the GOP will attack them for not being serious about reform. Either way they get attacked. Ezra posted this Toles cartoon today. It sums up the GOP game plan for everything, not just HCR. But you can hardly blame the R’s taking advantage of the D’s willingness to flinch at every turn.
Yossarian
This “corruption” thing is lazy cynicism masquerading as wisdom. If you want to understand Chris Dodd, you have to start by realizing that he’s a total institutional man. He loves the Senate and always has, and his blind spot is in thinking that he can cajole and backslap his way to a workable compromise. He’s built his whole career on passing legislation by making friends, basically– he did it with FMLA and child care issues, and he thinks he can do it again with financial reform. He’s probably wrong because the old Senate is broken and dead, but that’s his blind spot, not some cash handout from Goldman or whoever.
And yes, I used to work for the man and would lay down in traffic for him. So sue me.
Evinfuilt
Use the pre-text of working with Republicans as his excuse for why the bill is exactly what the banks want as a diversion from real regulation.
FPN
*Democratic Party and White House political advisers are telling Democratic Senators that it is more politically advantageous to keep alive the anti-bank sentiment as an election issue than to enact a compromise on regulatory reform.
http://thepastandthepending.com/index.php?id=8149159058624357102
Comrade Mary
You have just made me envision Dodd stripped and tattooed. I hate you.
kay
I took this online test early in the primary where I clicked a series of issues (ranking) and was matched to a Democratic candidate for President.
I ended up with Dodd.
So. I’m glad I completely ignored that.
Seriously, I love Elizabeth Warren, and read her before she was so famous, but I do worry a little bit about state law preemption with a federal consumer agency.
I have two concerns. First, in my opinion, states have done a better job of enforcing consumer regulations than federal regulators, and, second, when Congress-President goes to the GOP, what’s to stop them from weakening the federal consumer agency, and leaving us with a race to the bottom situation, where we end up with very little state law that applies and weak federal law?
I like to have two avenues, state and federal.
Part of the reason why we ended up here is we had anti-regulatory zealots writing federal law, and preempting (some good) state law.
What’s stopping that happening again?
JGabriel
If you get their votes in exchange, then it’s called “compromise”.
If you don’t their votes in exchange, or even a promise of their vote, then it’s called …
You know, I can’t even think of a single, accurate, word for how stupid, weak, and self-defeating that is. Though I’m beginning to worry that “Democrat” is fast becoming a synonym for it.
.
bkny
chris dodd has two very young daughters.
chris dodd doesn’t have too many productive working years left.
chris dodd wants to be sure he secures HIS family’s future and that it is comfortable.
so, where could chris dodd earn an income sufficient to satisfy his needs.
hmmmmm…..
John Cole
Actually, from what I read the other day, the bill Dodd was working on sounded pretty promising. It had weakened the Fed, had the consumer protection agency, included some shareholder provisions, regulated derivatives, etc. The only thing I saw missing was the Volcker rule.
Am I just being optimistic?
Joseph Nobles
@Yossarian:
I buy that about Dodd. The problem is that the foundation for being “chummy with banksters” has already been laid and approved by the spin inspectors. Democratic compromises with Republicans are already ripe for Republican arguments of chumminess with special interests, but Dodd will really get it. He really should have stripped the bill of Republican compromises and started from there.
ruemara
I dunno, I just read a diary at GOS that seemed like he was taking more positive, tougher regulation steps. At this point, I’m gonna just focus on HCR passing then develop a proper froth of outrage at banking.
mistermix
My guess is that Dodd’s years in the Senate will get him a multi-million $ lobbying job, if he wants it, no matter what kind of financial reform bill passes.
And he’d probably be more compromised if he were running for re-election in a tough race and had to count on campaign contributions from the banksters.
So my guess is more institutional allegiance, trying not to poison the well completely with Republicans, etc., as Yossarian suggests.
JasonF
If you’re right, then it’s a moot point because a bill with zero Republican votes is not a bill in this “It doesn’t count unless you get to sixty” environment.
Mike Kay
O/T Obama town hall on MSNBC
Yossarian
@Joseph Nobles:
That’s exactly right. The problem is that the AIG bonus stuff and the Countrywide mess have destroyed his credibility on this issue (and his electability, as it turned out), even though in both cases he didn’t really do anything wrong. He really should just unleash his best regulatory efforts and let the chips fall where they may, Republicans be damned, but civil liberties is really the only issue I can think of where he will just refuse to compromise. I think he’ll go until his last day in the Senate trying to wheedle votes out of Republicans, and will only look back after the fact with a realization that the GOP has become obstructionist til the bitter end.
The sad thing from the point of view of a Dodd supporter is that one of his lasting public legacies will be his supposed fidelity to banking interests, with no mention of the fact that he was the leading crusader in the Senate against the godawful bankruptcy bill, which basically handed the lives of working and middle class Americans to the credit card companies.
flounder
Why can’t he just pull a Massa and get his butt out the door?
Tsulagi
Don’t need to do any skipping. It’s the foreword, beginning, middle, as well as the end of the story. You don’t even need to open the damn book to know the story.
Could give points for consistency. Stay the course.
Mike in NC
“It’s a bit of a
high-wirecorrupt douchebag act,” Dodd (Conn.) said in an interview Sunday.IndieTarheel
@flounder: What happens in the Congressional Dining Room…
Just Some Fuckhead
Can’t be sure until we try it. Then when it fails, we can blame Reid for not trying hard enough to swing Snowe. Then we get Obama vs. The Obstructionist Republicans Part III. Then hopefully the progressives will save our asses after we steely-eyed realists completely fubar it.
Felonious Wench
@Tom Hilton:
Groundhog Day
geg6
This. Motherfucking this.
CalD
I guess I’m just not selfish enough to buy the notion that if anyone but me gets any part of what they want, I should count it as a loss. I also think there’s likely to be a real limit to how long a Democracy can long function as a zero-sum game.
Regardless of who may be more right or wrong on any given issue it’s very rare for anyone to be 100% right or 100% wrong. Even I can be wrong. And if you regard every concession in life as a loss, perhaps even a mortal sin, you’re basically going to be a pissed-off loser all your life because everything in life is a trade-off. The object is to try and make good trades, not to make none at all.
geg6
OT, but this is good news for all of us, but especially our Asian Americans:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_JUDGES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Felonious Wench
Due to the fact that if there is one universal hatred in this country right now it’s the financial system and the people who managed to run it into the ground, no, I don’t think you’re being unduly optimistic, John.
Although I will be interested to see how Republicans justify voting against tighter regulations. Free Market Principles tend to sound hollow to people living through a recession.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Love how you have made yourself out to be the progressive hero in this little drama.
gypsy howell
See, for backing legislation like that, you get to be Vice President. Oh yeah, there’s a lesson in it for Dodd. It just isn’t a lesson we like.
crack
Konczal @ Rortybomb is all over this.
John O
I think Dodd is a classic example of a decent man whose own personal bubble allowed him to believe that the banksters he was representing had the “good of the people” in mind…though that’s one serious bubble.
I’m kind of hoping he feels the freedom of no re-election concerns to do something worthwhile.
Yes, I’m being stupidly, hopelessly optimistic. John probably has it nailed as usual, and certainly does in terms of votes.
Adding that there is nothing more illustrative of Dem spinelessness and fealty to the hands that feed them than their unwillingness to go after Wall St. HARD. What, they’re afraid of teabagger blowback?
I hate the Dems. I just vote for them at this particular point in our history.
Sly
That’s a HUGE deal. So is this:
For a variety of reasons, the NY Fed is the most powerful reserve bank in the country. The recent crisis has increased this control, as the assets owned by the NY Fed have tripled in about a year to almost a trillion dollars (the second largest asset holder, Chicago, has a little less than 200 billion). And Wall Street firms are the member banks of the NY Fed, so they traditionally decides who will be running the nuts and bolts of the Federal Reserve System.
Placing the appointment of the person who will run this Branch within the immediate control of the Presidency (and I’m assuming this appointment will require Senate confirmation) will ruffle a lot of feathers and makes the presence of the CPA within the Fed a pill thats a little less bitter.
And yeah, he won’t get any Republican votes.
John O
Wall St. as the main issue in an election year would be smart, though, and would do a little bit to regain my faith that Obama knows his politics a bit better than I do, if that’s how it plays.
Meanwhile, I wait for HCR to go down in fiery Democratic crash…
Corner Stone
@Sly:
I don’t honestly see how it could be.
Khârn the Betrayer
Offtopic –
Credit agencies who gaveCDOs an ‘AAA’ are gonna downgrade the nation’s credit rating? As a result of an economic mess inspired, in part, by abject failure of rating agencies? Filed under “I” for “I should have seen that one coming”.
John O
Does anyone know how many total GOP votes Obama has gotten through his first term on legislation passed? A quick search didn’t turn up anything, and I didn’t feel like going through the Congressional record.
And of course the follow up question: How does it compare to recent P’OTUS?
(POTAI.)
JGabriel
Slightly OT, but it’s still about the Senate, TPM reports:
Hmm. Kind of kills that “independent” meme the Teabaggers have been trying to promulgate about themselves.
.
Martin
@John O: That might be a hard metric to make sense of. Obama has gotten quite a few Republican votes – just not cloture votes, and not on big-ticket items, but I’ve seen quite a few Senate bills go through with 80+ votes after squeaking by with a 60/40 cloture vote. Not nearly as interesting a narrative, however.
And the House has been passing shit like crazy – and not just on party-line votes, but it’s getting massively logjammed in the Senate. The GOP knows exactly where to put the pressure and where not to bother.
Nick
@John O:
passed in full? SCHIP got some Republican votes, so did Ledbetter. The stimulus got three Republican votes in the Senate (this is before Specter flipped). The jobs bill in the Senate got a few Republican votes. It didn’t pass totally, but Cap and Trade got some Republican votes in the House, namely Mike Castle (R-Delaware), Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) and Mary Bono Mack (R-California).
How is like recent Presidents? It’s not…most of Bush’s agenda minus tax cuts got Democratic votes. Reagan couldn’t get anything done without the Democrats. Only Clinton 1993-1994 and Carter 1979-1981 look similar. Coincidence? doubt it
Martin
Anyone have a point-by-point comparison of Dodd’s bill compared to the House bill already passed there or the WH proposal? The House bill appeared weaker than the WH proposal. Is Dodd’s weaker than the House bill or just different?
Dee Loralei
@John O: I can’t tell you the real number, but off the top of my head, and only counting major legislation, not appointments or post office namings,etc., 3 total in the Senate and 1 total in the house. Specter, Snowe and Collins, I think, for TARP. And Cao for healthcare in the House. And yea, I know it must be a few more somewhere for other bills.
Sly
@Corner Stone:
It lends the NY Fed resistance to industry capture, for one. The current agencies that regulate banks are particularly vulnerable to this because most of them are funded by the very institutions they’re supposed to police. So a bank can threaten to transform into a thrift (or hell, even set up a special investment vehicle that is a thrift and, due to the nature of current financial regulation, be exclusively regulated by the undermanned and underfunded OTS, like AIG did).
The daily operations of the NY Fed are more vulnerable to this because it is literally run by the member banks, and Wall Street has the most control over the most powerful Fed branch in the system. They serve on the Board of Governors, from which the President of the branch is appointed. Putting the NY Fed President up for a Presidential nomination would, in effect, bring some much needed politicization to the institution, which isn’t always a bad thing.
It’s quite possible that a President will nominate a current member of the board, but the second rule would disbar any bank officer from serving on the board and, thus, become President of the NY Fed anyway through political influence. A stronger rule would bar bank officers from becoming President even after they retire (say, for a period of five years or so), but that would likely entail a majority of the board resigning (along with current President William Dudley, who worked for GS until 2007). So that probably isn’t going to happen.
Redshift
OT: The guy next to me on the train is reading IBD. Didn’t realize their editorial page was quite so full-on wingnut.
Martin
@Redshift:
Redshift
@Martin: Well, I don’t read newspapers much any more, and I don’t disagree that most editorial pages are distressingly heavy with wingnut columnists, but I was under the impression that a cartoon of the Democratic donkey as a suicide bomber saying “Obama Akbar” with “healthcare” written on the bomb was still a bit beyond the pale for most major papers…
4tehlulz
@Redshift: That’s….actually pretty restrained for the IBD.
JGabriel
@Redshift:
Oh yeah. If WSJ is now the Fox News of the business press, IBD is its World Nut Daily.
.
Redshift
@4tehlulz: Geez.
Martin
@Redshift: Editorial pages are the new AM radio. I think WaPo and WSJ are making that clear enough.
taylormattd
Um, ok, I hope you will all forgive this totally off topic (and fairly gross) post.
But jesus christ, did you all see those stories about the details in the John Edwards sex tape?
Vomit.
http://wonkette.com/414220/john-edwards-wriggles-his-tongue-around-in-rielle-hunters-hooha
Redshift
@4tehlulz: Honestly, though, while it worries me when they try to convince Democrats that passing HCR will be bad for them electorally (because I’m afraid they’ll believe it), offensive imagery and gratuitous bigotry aside, it doesn’t really bother me when they try to convince themselves that it’s true. Just like when they believe their own propaganda about Obama being charming but not smart enough to speak intelligently without a teleprompter, if they want to cackle with glee at the prospect of Dems destroying themselves by passing HCR, it will just bite them in the ass.
Martin
@taylormattd: At this point in our social history, no diaper == wholesome. Just imagine how things would have shaped up if he had won the Dem primary…
Punchy
Whole lotta WTF in this blogpost. Hadda make sure the date was 2010 and not 2006.
Holy yikes.
les
@kay:
While I agree in part–some states are good, but others are worse than even watered down fed–the repubs will just do what they did under dubya: prevent the good states from enforcing consumer fraud/truth in lending laws. And once in place, it’s not that easy to repeal protections once they exist. But, again, watered down federal rules? God, these dems make it hard…
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Nope, I’ve never even claimed to be a progressive. Maybe you need to get yer vision checked.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
If you don’t their votes in exchange, or even a promise of their vote, then it’s called …
“Appeasement”
Why should the wingnuts have sole rights to Chamberlain as a cudgel? Hang that label around every Democrat compromising away their mandate.