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Two More Ways Republicans Are Undermining Financial Regulations

After Republicans took over the House of Representatives in November 2010, the incoming House Financial Services Chairman, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), said he believes Washington’s role is to “serve the banks.” And the GOP has done its best this year to follow that directive, by denying regulators the money they need to implement the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, trying to repeal or water down some of the law’s key provisions, and blocking Obama administration nominations to regulatory posts.

In the budget deal that averted a government shutdown last week, the GOP kept it up. While the Securities and Exchange Commission was granted a desperately needed increase in funding, the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission, which is given the Herculean task of policing the derivatives market by Dodd-Frank, was not so lucky:

Under the new deal, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission will get $10 million more for staffing, thus making layoffs for the agency less likely in 2012. But that money won’t come through a funding increase: In the end, Republicans refused to budge on the overall funding level for the agency, which will stay at $205 million. Instead, $10 million for staffing will be shifted out of the agency’s budget for information technology. The overall level of funding falls significantly short  of President Obama’s own request for the CFTC — $308 million, which would be an increase of almost 50 percent — as well as the Senate Democrats’ request for $240 million.

Senate Republicans have also put a hold on a slew of nominations to fill financial regulatory positions, ostensibly to ensure that President Obama doesn’t make recess appointments:

Several of Obama’s picks are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate, including Martin Gruenberg to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Thomas Hoenig to be the FDIC’s vice chair and Thomas Curry to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

But Republicans refused to sign off on the list, complaining that the White House did not give them assurances Obama would not use a long congressional recess to make temporary appointments.

These kinds of actions have the effect of undermining Wall Street reform and preventing regulators from ensuring that the 2008n financial crisis doesn’t have a sequel. The end result is that Bachus’ marching order gets fulfilled, as the GOP helps the banks go right back to the same practices that brought down the economy in the first place.

 

By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, December 20, 2011

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Banks, Economy | , , , , , | Leave a comment

PolitiFact’s Pants On Fire For Choosing “Ryan Will End Medicare” As “Lie Of The Year”

This morning, PolitiFact announcedthat the Democrats’ charge that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) budget will end Medicare is the biggest lie of the year — even though it’s 100 percent true!

Here is why: Ryan’s plan ends traditional fee-for-service program and forces all future retirees to ultimately enroll in private coverage.

Under his proposal, beginning in 2022, people turning 65 will receive a pre-determined “premium support” payment to purchase private insurance. Insurers will offer a basic package of benefits, but traditional Medicare — the program that President Lyndon Johnson enacted in 1965 — will literally stop enrolling new beneficiaries. Rather than paying health care providers directly — and using its market clout to secure better bargains and other efficiencies for enrollees —  the government would now pay multiple private health insurers pre-determined amounts per beneficiary to act as middle men between patients and providers.

It will no longer guarantee seniors a defined package of benefits, but will instead only offer a defined contribution towards their health care costs. As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of Ryan’s proposal explains, “the payment for 65-year-olds in 2022 is specified to be $8,000, on average, which is approximately the same dollar amount as projected net federal spending per capita for 65-year-olds in traditional Medicare.” However every subsequent year, as health care costs increase, the government’s contribution “would grow at a slower rate,” inflation, and the age of the enrollee. By 2030, under the proposal, the premium support would “only cover 32 percent of a typical 65-year-old’s total health care spending” and would decrease every subsequent year.

PolitiFact concedes that this is, in fact, “a huge change to the current program.” But it’s more than that. Capping costs to beneficiaries, closing the traditional fee-for-service program, and forcing seniors to enroll in new private coverage, ends Medicare by eliminating everything that has defined the program for the last 46 years.

 

By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, December 20, 2011

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Health Care, Seniors | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Ring, Ring”: Which Candidate Should Answer That 3 A.M. Phone Call?

It’s late at night when the phone rings at the White House:

Kim Jong Il, the ruthless oddball dictator of nuclear-armed North Korea, is dead. His apparent successor is his 20-something son, about whom practically nothing is known. South Korean officials have rushed to put the nation’s military forces on high alert.

Do we want Mitt Romney answering that phone call?

Newt Gingrich?

We learned Sunday night what happens when Barack Obama is on the receiving end of unsettling news from one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints. There’s a round of consultation with allies, a carefully worded official statement, an assessment of the status of diplomatic efforts to defuse North Korea’s nuclear program — in other words, a cautious and measured response.

Implicit in Obama’s actions is the recognition that nothing a U.S. president says or does at this moment is likely to influence North Korean events in a positive way. Intemperate words or deeds, however, could be destabilizing at a moment of sudden transition. This is no moment to apply sharp pressure to a hermetically sealed, supremely paranoid regime that considers itself perpetually besieged and happens to possess nuclear weapons.

The White House was particularly concerned about how Kim’s son — Kim Jong Eun, the “Great Successor” who may have already assumed power — would react to anything seen as a provocation. The young, inexperienced leader might believe he had to make a show of belligerence to prove himself. Aggressive action could prompt a sharp South Korean reaction, and suddenly a situation could become a crisis.

All this is lost on Romney, who came out guns blazing with what sounded like a call for regime change.

“Kim Jong Il was a ruthless tyrant who lived a life of luxury while the North Korean people starved,” Romney said in a statement. “He recklessly pursued nuclear weapons, sold nuclear and missile technology to other rogue regimes, and committed acts of military aggression against our ally South Korea. He will not be missed.”

The statement continued, “His death represents an opportunity for America to work with our friends to turn North Korea off the treacherous course it is on and ensure security in the region. America must show leadership at this time. The North Korean people are suffering through a long and brutal national nightmare. I hope the death of Kim Jong Il hastens its end.”

Well, that’s what we all hope. But dancing on the dictator’s grave is hardly presidential. How can anyone be certain what approach is most likely to lead to reform in North Korea until we know more about the Great Successor? Or until we can ascertain who now controls the nuclear weapons?

Romney is eager to show that he would somehow be tougher than Obama in foreign policy — a high bar, given Obama’s record of killing Osama bin Laden and helping orchestrate the demise of Moammar Gaddafi. It’s possible that Romney understands what his responsibility would be if he faced a similar circumstance as president. But if you take his words seriously, the former Massachusetts governor sounds like a dangerous hothead.

That’s nothing compared to Gingrich, whose past statements about North Korea have been shot from the hip.

In 2009, Gingrich said the United States should have used force to prevent North Korea from testing a new long-range missile. “There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say, ‘We’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period,’” he said.

No, there are not any “standoff capabilities” that could have been used, at least not without starting a nuclear war. Gingrich has expressed his enthusiasm for a laser-beam weapon that the Pentagon tried to develop, but that program was radically scaled back. We could have just destroyed the missile on its launch pad, perhaps with a cruise missile strike, but the North Koreans might well have responded by destroying Seoul.

One of Gingrich’s worries is that North Korean scientists will be the first in the world to work out how a nuclear device can be used to create a massive electromagnetic pulse — and fry electronic circuits from Malibu to Maine. Would somebody please cancel the man’s subscription to Popular Science?

During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton famously asked whether Obama was ready for the 3 a.m. phone call about a foreign crisis. Kim’s death reminds us that it’s always 3 a.m. somewhere in the world.

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Tap: “Boehner The Barkeep” And The Radical Republican Winterfest

House Speaker John Boehner gave a spirited reply when asked recently about whether his party’s resistance to middle-class tax cuts risked making Republicans appear to be lackeys of the rich.

“I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, all right?” Boehner said. “My dad owned a bar. I know what’s going on out in America.”

So Boehner has his finger on the American pulse because his deceased father owned a saloon? What strange brew have they been pouring in the speaker’s office?

Whatever advice Earl Boehner has been giving his son from the grave, it doesn’t appear to be working. On Monday, the bar owner’s son aligned himself with House conservatives in opposition to a broadly bipartisan plan to extend a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.

This new position, essentially reversing the one Boehner voiced a mere three days earlier, proves anew that the old-school speaker is less a leader of his caucus than a servant of his radical backbenchers. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he’s their barkeep.

Three times at a news conference on Friday, Boehner was asked whether he could support a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, as Senate Democrats and Republicans were planning. Three times, Boehner declined to state an objection to the two-month extension (he objected to a different part of the agreement, about an oil pipeline, which the senators subsequently changed to his liking).

“I just gave you an answer. How much clearer can I be?” Boehner said, refusing to take issue with the two-month extension.

And so senators passed the extension, 89 to 10. Tea Party heroes Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio voted for the compromise. The fiercest budget cutter of them all, Sen. Tom Coburn, voted for it. Republican lions such as John Cornyn, Jon Kyl and Mitch McConnell voted for it. Only seven Republicans voted “no.”

McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who negotiated the compromise, kept Boehner informed at every step — and was confident enough in Boehner’s acquiescence that his office sent out a notice saying there would be no more legislative business in the Senate until 2 p.m. on Jan. 23. But Boehner’s backbenchers — particularly the Tea Party freshmen — had other ideas, and, in a Saturday teleconference, made clear to Boehner that he would have to abandon the compromise.

The House Republican freshmen have become a bit tipsy with power, and freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) on Tuesday boasted at a news conference that his class is “performing more like sophomores now than freshmen.” Actually, their performance is more sophomoric than anything, but they’ve been able to deliver a string of insults to Boehner, most notably the July revolt that forced the speaker to pull his debt-limit plan from the floor. If Boehner needs any more evidence he’s out of style in his party, he can ponder the rise in the presidential race of Newt Gingrich, the man Boehner tried to depose from the speakership 15 years ago, losing his leadership position in the process.

On Tuesday, Boehner had the unpleasant task of going before the cameras to explain why his House Republicans, after championing tax cuts for millionaires, would be voting against a tax cut for ordinary Americans.

“You know, Americans are tired of, uh, Washington’s short-term fixes and gimmicks,” Boehner began. Behind him in the hallway outside his office, four American flags provided patriotic cover for the reversal. He complained that “the Senate Democratic leaders passed a two-month extension” — omitting mention that Senate Republicans, with Boehner’s knowledge and tacit support, had agreed.

So rather than pass a two-month extension, he’s willing to have the tax cuts lapse entirely when they expire at year end?

“I don’t believe the differences between the House and Senate are that great,” Boehner said, by way of reassurance. But this only confirmed that his side was making a big stink over nothing.

Why didn’t he raise warnings earlier about the two-month extension? “Uh, we expressed our reservations about what the Senate was doing,” he said.

What did he make of the fact that 90 percent of the Senate supported the compromise? Boehner, in reply, demanded to know why “we always have to go to the lowest common denominator” — which is exactly what he had done in letting his backbenchers lead him.

The speaker denied the obvious truth that he had encouraged the compromise before opposing it. He licked his lips, gave a “thanks, everybody” and disappeared.

The sophomoric freshmen must have needed their barkeep to serve them another round.

 

By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 19, 2011

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Middle Class, Teaparty | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“King Newt”: Why Not Just Call For Martial Law And Be Done With It?

There has been no shortage of wacky ideas from the Republican candidates, but Newt Gingrich’s attacks on the judiciary are truly far out on the lunatic fringe of right-wing politics.

At first he confined himself to merely railing against the independence of the judiciary, without which due process simply cannot exist. Recently, he’s started talking about arresting judges who issue rulings he doesn’t like. Intimidating judges used to be a criminal offense. Now it’s a campaign plank and a Sunday morning sound bite.

On the CBS News program “Face the Nation” yesterday, Mr. Gingrich said Congress should compel judges to testify about any decision that annoys the majority party on Capitol Hill. He said he would send U.S. Marshals to arrest them if they did not willingly come to testify. (Marshals, for what it’s worth, are charged with protecting federal judges, who get hundreds of death threats a year.) Mr. Gingrich is not the first politician to say shockingly inappropriate things about federal judges. In 2005, Tom DeLay, who was the Republican House Majority Leader, threatened retribution against the judges who ruled against his wishes in the Terri Schiavo case.

And that same year, John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, attributed episodes of courthouse violence to distress over judges who make “political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public.” This was shortly after a career criminal tried to shoot his way out of an Atlanta trial, killing the judge in the process. And after a deranged man murdered a Chicago judge’s mother and husband because the judge had dismissed his lawsuit.

But Mr. Gingrich takes the attack on the judiciary farther than any other national figure I’ve heard, at least since the Jim Crow days. He’s actually gone so far as to suggest Congress impeach uncooperative judges. Michael Mukasey, the former attorney general who served under George W. Bush, called Mr. Gingrich proposals “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off the wall.”

Dangerous and irresponsible is right, for many reasons—but I’ll just give you two. One is that Mr. Gingrich’s proposal opens the door to Congress firing and hiring judges each time power changes hands between the political parties. Judges have lifetime terms to protect them from exactly this kind of pressure. Second, it would effectively eliminate the role of the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality.

Mr. Gingrich has referred several times to Thomas Jefferson’s elimination of federal judgeships at the turn of the 19th century. He presents that as an uncontroversial move, when in fact it was part of a highly partisan attempt to rescind his predecessor’s judicial appointments. He’s also fond of saying that the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, established during Jefferson’s presidency with the seminal case Marbury v. Madison, has been “grossly overstated.”

That statement alone should turnoff primary voters. Marbury v. Madison was a founding decision for a fledgling democracy that had shed its blood to get away from a law that was subject to the will and whim of a political figure—the King of England.

 

By: Andrew Rosenthal, The New York Times, December 19,2011

December 20, 2011 Posted by | Democracy, GOP | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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