Ex-Senator Barney Frank
We just got a preview of what’s going to happen to the country under the new Congress, with both the House and Senate controlled by Republicans – and it isn’t pretty.
Dodd-Frank decimated
In the 11th hour, House Republicans sneaked into the 2015 budget bill provisions for removing important regulations of big banks from the Dodd-Frank Act passed in 2010 after the near collapse of the economy that required taxpayer bailouts of banks whose unregulated loans went sour. The addition to the budget bill allows them to resume trading certain risky financial instruments. Over the opposition of both progressives and tea partyers, the legislation was retained and passed by both the House and Senate. President Obama then signed the bill.
President Barack Obama
No choice
He didn’t want to, but did so partly to avoid a repeat of the government shutdown the Republicans caused in 2013 in efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. However, more than that was at stake in Obama’s decision.
The president said that if an agreement weren’t reached this year, the new Congress would enact an even worse bill when it took control in early January. And it was obvious to anyone whose eyes weren’t closed that he was right.
Just like old times
So we’re back at square one, folks. More than half of you voted to retain the same politicians, or their ilk, whose success in deregulating the financial institutions pushed the country to the brink of economic calamity. We’re now at risk of having to spend our hard-earned money to again bail out these Wall Street behemoths if they resume gambling on loans, which they will be sorely tempted to do.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts railed against the deregulation inclusion in the budget bill, and drafted an amendment to delete it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
“Ever since the new financial regulations went into place, Wall Street has been working behind the scenes to open another loophole so they could gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system,” Warren said. “Congress should not put taxpayers on the book for another bailout.”
There’s more to come, folks.
Yogi Berra
She was ignored, and the bill goes into effect. As Yogi said, it’s déjà vu all over again. This bill was a presentiment of further legislation to enrich corporations at the expense of the vast majority of the American people and damage an economy that Obama’s policies rescued from collapse and drove steadily upward. The voters will have no one to blame but themselves.
Let’s start a War-ren.
They can rectify their huge mistake. Support a drive to draft Warren as a 2016 presidential candidate, and then vote her into office. She will aggressively counter Republican attempts to place governing power in the hands of the rich.