Senate leaders spar on financial reform
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Senate leaders on Tuesday began their sparring over the financial reform bill, setting the tone for what is expected to weeks of debate on lawmakers’ next pitched battle.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged Republicans to allow the financial reform bill to come to the Senate floor where both parties could offer amendments. He spoke after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he was pleased that bipartisan talks have resumed over some of the bill’s contested provisions.
The leaders’ exchange was indicative of the political problems surrounding the bill. Democrats need at least one Republican vote to bring the bill to the floor and to ensure that a GOP filibuster could be broken. In this midterm election year, neither party wants to be on the wrong side of a populist issue that provides more fuel for some sort of bipartisan approach.
Speaking at the start of the morning Senate’s sessions, Reid urged Republicans to return to the days when legislation was debated on the floor and whoever had the most votes would carry the issue. Then in a plea for any Republican to split off and help bring the bill to the floor, Reid insisted that Democrats were open to change.
“The bill we’ll bring to the floor is the result of months of bipartisan meetings, investigations, negotiations and consensus. But our Republican colleagues insist on pretending this is a partisan effort,” Reid said.
“We need to make everyone understand that this is not a final product,” Reid said in his televised remarks. “Let’s bring this matter to the floor and offer amendments the way it used to be. Whoever gets the most votes wins.”
One of the key issues is a $50-billion industry-supported fund that would go to pay for problems for large institutions. Republicans insist this fund will encourage bailouts, while Democrats note the money is not taxpayer funds and would go to pay for the pieces of failed institutions rather than saving them.
“It is important for the country and taxpayer that we get this right, that we put them before politics,” McConnell said on the floor. “That’s why I was disappointed to read that Senate Democrats are refusing to drop the $50-billion bailout fund -- a fund that the Treasury secretary himself opposes -- unless Republicans pay a price for taking it out.
“This is exactly what Americans don’t like about Washington: when one side tries to ‘get’ something for doing what they should have done in the first place. If everyone agrees it should be dropped, then it should be dropped. And if Senate Democrats think it should stay, then they should explain why they think the Treasury secretary was wrong when he said that this bailout fund ‘would create expectations that the government would step in to protect shareholders and creditors from losses.’
“Both sides have expressed a willingness to make the changes needed to ensure without any doubt that this bill won’t put taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts of Wall Street banks. Let’s just do that.”
Democrats are hoping to bring the bill to the floor on Thursday, when President Obama is scheduled to address the issue in a New York City speech just blocks away from Wall Street.
-- Michael Muskal
