“Time For The Laugh Track!”: Republicans Have A Veto-Proof Math Problem
Behold Washington’s new math.
The first anti-Obamacare bill of the new Congress, the Save American Workers Act of 2015, was written to undo the part of the law that defines “full employment” as holding a job for as little as 30 hours per week. It passed, and on the way, it became even more partisan in color than the 2014 version of the bill. In the last Congress, 18 Democrats voted with every Republican to pass the bill, but Thursday only 12 did, including all but one of the 2014 supporters (not Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop) and two new Blue Dogs (Florida Rep. Gwen Graham, Nebraska Rep. Brad Ashford).
By turning on the bill, the Democrats made clear that they would sustain the veto already promised by President Obama, and, yes, they have the votes to do so. If every member of the 114th House of Representatives shows up for a vote, 48 Democrats need to join every Republican to override a veto. Three times this week, when the GOP brought forward bills to approve the Keystone pipeline and delay part of the Volcker Rule, the Democrats denied them all but a handful of votes.
Just as interesting as the Republican math problem were the arguments Democrats used to hold back their votes. In its veto message, the White House said the 30-hour work week bill “would significantly increase the deficit” and cited 2014 numbers from the Congressional Budget Office to say it would “increase the budget deficit by $45.7 billion over the 2015 to 2024 period.” In the Senate yesterday, in a conversation with reporters, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin repeatedly mocked Republicans for offering changes to the ACA without offering up the mechanisms to pay for them.
“I’m just not going to buy the premise Republicans now want to sell, that deficits don’t count,” Durbin said. “Since they’re in the majority, they’re going to use dynamic scoring—time for the laugh track!—they’re going to use dynamic scoring to prove that they can cut any tax without an impact on the deficit. That doesn’t work. That’s why we’ve stopped short of repealing the medical device tax, because the payfor has never been explained.”
Of course, the Democrats had a terrible election—no news there—and in the process they watched Republicans leap ahead of them in voter trust on key issues. Republicans pulled into a tie on health care, which had always been a Democratic advantage, and they built huge leads on taxes, the economy, and the deficit. Yet in the months after the election, they watched President Obama’s approval rating tick up, and saw a dynamite series of jobs reports followed by 5 percent GDP growth in the final quarter.
Democrats paid attention to new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s maiden speech, and how “the [economic] uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress.” To counter that claim, Democrats in Congress want to reframe the GOP’s bills as deficit-busters, and make sure Republicans get none of Barack Obama’s credit if the economy continues to improve.
By: Dave Weigel, Bloomberg Politics, January 9, 2015
“Aiding And Abetting”: Scott Brown Weakened Restrictions On Goldman Sachs Abuses
In his public resignation letter in today’s New York Times, former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith said that one of the fastest ways to get ahead with the firm is to persuade clients “to invest in the stocks or other products that [the firm is] trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit.” He lambastes a firm culture where colleagues openly boast of “ripping their clients off.”
The sad thing is, this sort of shady might well have been on the way to being curtailed if not for the actions of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA). After Brown was elected to the senate in 2010, he threatened to join a Republican filibuster of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, using that threat to significantly water down the bill. Among the industry-favored concessions he extracted was weakening of the “Volcker rule,” which was meant to curb risky speculative investments that do not benefit customers.
Thanks to Brown’s maneuver, the final bill upped the amount of risky trading big banks like Goldman could engage in, increasing the amount of gambling they’re able to do by billions of dollars. Since then, financial industry lobbyists have been hammering away at the the rule in an attempt to render it completely meaningless.
The financial sector, of course, has repaid Brown with a flurry of campaign contributions. Between contributions from the firm’s leadership PAC and contributions from company employees, Brown has already received more than $40,000 in campaign cash from Goldman Sachs this cycle.
By: Josh Israel, Think Progress, March 14, 2012
“Goldman Sachs’ Million Dollar Man”: Mitt Romney’s Ties To A “Toxic And Destructive” Bank
Republican presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney (R) is taking a break from the campaign trail a day after finishing third in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, stopping in New York City for multiple fundraisers and a visit with campaign surrogate Donald Trump. Romney will attend three fundraisers and haul in an expected $2 million this week, bolstering a fundraising total that has already made him Wall Street’s favorite candidate.
More than any other institution on Wall Street, Romney has ties to Goldman Sachs, the firm that was slammed in a New York Times editorial this morning by a resigning executive director who decried the firm’s “toxic and destructive” culture. Romney and his wife, Ann, have investments in almost three-dozen Goldman Sachs funds valued between $17.7 million and $50.5 million, according to his personal financial disclosure forms.
No Wall Street bank has been as generous to Romney’s campaign, his leadership PAC, and the super PAC that backs him as Goldman. According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission reports, Goldman Sachs employees have given the Romney campaign more than $427,000 during the 2012 cycle, nearly twice as much as he has received from any other major Wall Street bank (Citigroup employees have given roughly $274,000 to Romney, the second-largest amount). According to OpenSecrets.org, total contributions to Romney from Goldman Sachs, its employees, and their immediate family members totals more than $521,000.
The Free And Strong America Leadership PAC, which is affiliated with the Romney campaign, has received $30,000 from Goldman Sachs employees during the 2012 cycle. Goldman employees and their spouses, meanwhile, have given $670,000 to Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing Romney.
After making billions of dollars in the run-up to the financial collapse of 2008, Goldman Sachs benefited from a federal bailout that saved Wall Street banks. The company, like other Wall Street firms, stood opposed to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that was signed into law in 2010 and also fought regulations it contained, such as the Volcker Rule, which would prevent proprietary trading that made the bank billions but left taxpayers on the hook when it nearly collapsed. Romney has rarely missed a chance to tout his opposition to the law on the campaign trail, announcing that he’d repeal it even before he read it.
By: Travis Waldron and Josh Israel, Think Progress, March 14, 2012
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