Biden pitches financial reform as a boon to middle class
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The United States is poised at the beginning of an economic expansion that requires financial reform to meet the administration’s goal of raising the middle class, Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Brookings Institution and before the president is scheduled to speak on financial reform in New York City on Thursday, Biden outlined the administration’s goal of improving the lot of the middle class as the nation works its way out of the recession.
“If the next expansion fails to lift the middle class, if it bubbles and bursts, if it gives a high-five to Wall Street while stiff-arming Main Street, then it will be an expansion that we will not be proud of, and it will not be the expansion that the president and I believe this nation so badly needs,” Biden said.
Biden went on to argue that for the middle class to share in the expansion, barriers to healthcare and education, and energy independence must all be on the administration’s agenda. A healthcare insurance overhaul has been signed into law after a bruising battle in Congress. The administration has also stepped up its push for education reform including more access to accountability and for alternative energy-based jobs.
“So our administration is plotting a very different path than the one plotted the last time this country found itself with such an important set of choices to make about our economic future,” Biden said. “To us the choices are clear, common-sense rules and regulations in financial markets that protect consumers, taxpayers, and I might add, the overall economy.”
Senate leaders sparred Tuesday morning about financial overhaul, but the debate had been expected to pick up steam when Democrats hope to push their bill to the floor possibly on Thursday. That move requires 60 votes, one more than Democrats control.
Democrats have been working hard to try and win over a GOP senator, but no Republican has publicly shifted. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the ongoing talks over the bill, and Democrats have indicated that they may push the Thursday time frame back to next week to allow time for more talks – and for more wooing.
The Obama administration is seeking specific points in the bill, Biden said on Tuesday.
“Our goals are well-known,” Biden said. They include “an independent consumer agency that is not beholden to the banks [and] new rules for derivatives that bring the light of day into that shadowy risky market.”
Biden did not discuss one of the more contested issues, the creation of a $50-billion, industry-financed fund that the GOP sees as a boost to bailouts but which Democrats call a way to pick up the wreckage of failed institutions.
The vice president did call for the creation of “necessary capital buffers against destabilizing systemic risk; and when such risks do find their way into the system, the ability to unwind interconnected banks without dragging down the market for the taxpayers once again.”
-- Michael Muskal
LATimesmuskal