Senate to Begin One-Sided “Debate” on Financial Reform
It appears that the Democratic strategy of forcing their Republican counterparts to vote once a day against reining in Wall Street's excesses—not to mention their threat to keep the Senate in session all night—has paid off. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) essentially threw in the towel today, admitting defeat in his protracted showdown with Senator Chris Dodd (D-CA) over the financial-reform bill.
Shelby's chief objection is to a provision that he has argued would create "a sprawling new consumer protection bureau that will find and force its way into facets of our economy that had nothing to do with the housing crisis." Unlike Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's argument that a proposed $50 billion fund, paid for by the banks, to pay for future bailouts would somehow encourage taxpayer bailouts, this argument has the merit of not being absurd on its face, but Democrats nevertheless have dismissed it. Dodd and Majority Leader Harry Reid both say Republicans should feel free to propose amendments during debate, but the minority party doesn't have the votes to get them passed, so it's unclear what purpose that will serve.This quote from The New York Times illustrates the extent to which today's development amounts to a cave-in:
Democrats reacted cautiously without understanding what had changed the Republican thinking. Republicans remained opposed to a number of provisions in the bill and still control enough votes to filibuster and ultimately prevent the bill from being adopted.
While it's good news that financial reform is finally being debated, I find it frustrating that, in public at least, both parties appear to be more concerned with scoring cheap political points than with ensuring that this legislation doesn't end up doing more harm than good. To quote a phrase popular among lawyers of a certain age, hard cases make bad law. In other words, while Rahm Emanuel may be determined to never let a crisis go to waste, the rest of us should be careful not to turn yesterday's catastrophe—in this case, the financial crisis—into tomorrow's gigantic waste of time and money.
Good regulation is essential to a functioning society. The fellow who inspects construction sites to make sure everything is up to code is someone whose salary I am glad to pay with my hard-earned tax dollars (unless, of course, he happens to be a serial fraudster). But I'm a bit less excited to pay the salaries of those whose sole purpose on Earth is to ensure that companies are in compliance with irrelevant rules that were passed under duress during some long-forgotten scandal.
Republicans' excessive disregard for regulations was on display throughout George W. Bush's presidency. But right now, we are in greater danger of suffering as a result of Democrats' excessive regard for rules that elevate sometimes dubious notions of fairness above such competing concerns as logic and efficiency.
In reality, Democrats and Republicans have been working together for a very long time on the financial-reform packages in both the House and the Senate. But when it's time to vote, things always seem to end up breaking down on party lines. I recognize that, given their numerical disadvantages, Republicans have been relying on iron-clad discipline to maintain any semblance of influence, but the nation would be better off if the "party of no" would produce an authoritative leader capable of analyzing legislation, raising credible objections, and promising genuine cooperation in exchange for genuine solutions.
Without that, we are left in the uncomfortable position of hoping that the "party of results" knows what the hell it's doing.