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Financial Reform and the Filibuster

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April 21, 2010 – Comments (3)

I'm not going to get into specifics here... because I don't necessarily know the best way to accomplish financial reform... but I know we need it.

So I was a little surprised when I read Paul Krugman's blog post today, where he mentions that republicans may actually have the audacity to use the filibuster to block financial reform.

Wouldn't this be political suicide, especially in the wake of the latest scandal at Goldman Sachs? I'm sure republicans have their own reasons for wanting to block financial reform... but what about the will of the American public, which overwhelmingly wants to see this reform happen? Would there be any way to defend this filibuster?

And is there any way to defend Peter Schiff's position that we need less regulation of the financial industry? He argues that we don't want Washington to become too powerful... but his solution is to give unlimited freedom to hedge fund managers and investment bankers to do whatever they want. This strikes me as being very transparent: a stock broker running for public office, so that he can give more power to his fellow stock brokers and fund managers.

Thoughts/comments would be appreciated.

3 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On April 21, 2010 at 1:23 PM, davejh23 (< 20) wrote:

Have you read Frank's reform bill?  I don't know that this is necessarily political suicide.  The democrats already committed political suicide by using unconstitutional tactics to pass a wildly unpopular healthcare bill...while Pelosi openly ignored even her liberal constituents and publicly stated that they didn't know what was good for them.  Republicans know that healthcare reform is needed, but they knew the bill being pushed wouldn't bring real reform.  Everyone knows that financial reform is needed, but the Republicans aren't going to get behind Frank's bill.  Both parties are extremely unpopular right now.  People aren't just disgusted with the opposing party, they're disgusted with Washington in general as corruption has been exposed in both parties.

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#2) On April 21, 2010 at 1:33 PM, ChannelDunlap (< 20) wrote:

I agree, any hope that the Republicans had of sweeping in in November and reclaiming a majority is gone if they are as vocally opposed to financial reform as they were to Healthcare.  You actually had some people who didn't want healthcare reform, but EVERYBODY wants financial reform.  Everybody knows (or, to be fair, "believes", for those of you who would disagree) that ultimately Wall St was the reason the crash was as bad as it was.  And if Republicans step in to try to defend the banks somehow, I think we can safely look forward to another couple years of Democratic majority.

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#3) On April 21, 2010 at 2:32 PM, eldemonio (98.82) wrote:

Unfortunately, any financial reform will be created with the help of the same companies who led us into Clusterflockville, USA.

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