.JPG)
....Make it tougher. but.....
What I would do, if I were Harry Reid, is say that this is the bill we have, painstakingly achieved 18 long and grueling months after the last Republican administration took us to the edge of our deepest economic abyss in nearly a century -- this is where we stand and we're not changing one bloody word of it.
We're playing no more Republican games. We've sat with them and haggled with them and added and subtracted assorted angels from the legislative pinheads. But no more. Their squalid game of obstructionism and delay stops here, on this bill, and it stops now.
Senate Democrats finally possess an unmitigated winner -- a reasonably stringent anti-Wall Street bill, or so agrees virtually every responsible economist; a financial bill which also registers a supermajority of popular support -- and what do they do?
"After meeting briefly on Monday," reported the NY Times, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and "Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, reported no progress."
Dear Sen. Dodd: Progress on what? How does one improve or progress on the winning hand, which later can only be strengthened by merger with the House bill and weakened by Republican accommodations?
From this point on, further "progress" can only be defined from the Republicans' political perspective: They'll tweak the bill just enough to declare that they saved it -- and the American people -- from a horrific Democratic mistake of apocalyptic proportions.
Dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, by shifting a comma or dotting one more "t" or crossing another enigmatic "i," you're only handing those operatically fussy, sea-lawyer Republicans your clear victory.
They've backed themselves into their own uncompromising, obstructionist corner -- and now you, Sens. Dodd and Reid, are opening an escape route for them.
Make them drop the procedural "F" bomb, which by rights they'd have to do -- right? -- sans any more legislative changes, since they've declared the current bill unworthy of divine Republican support.
Look, dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, this filibustering showdown has been in the offing for months. So I ask you: What better time to play your hand than when it's the undisputed winning one?
Damn it all you've got them on the ropes. Now deliver the lethal blow; pummel these latte-sipping, sunbooth-tanning, Volvo-driving, Wall Street-schmoozing predators for the unrehabilitated bullies they are.
Speaking from the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell "rattled off a list of major legislation," reports the Times, "that he said had not benefited Americans in the ways Democrats had promised, including the economic stimulus measures" -- loaded with Republican amendments -- "and the health care legislation" -- loaded with Republican amendments.
And McConnell was absolutely right, the Dems can say. Had it not been for Republican accommodations achieved after prolonged watering-down sessions, the major legislation he cited would have been far superior -- by now we would have achieved full employment, banished the common cold, and all your children would be straight-A students. You know, real populist stuff.
Yet the minority leader is at it again, this time "pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street," as Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago, "while in fact doing just the opposite."
Or, to boil their antidemocratic chokehold down to its paradigmatic essence, as Krugman also did: What Senate Republicans are doing on the financial bill is a "truly shameless performance" -- three little profoundly accurate words that should be DNC-gilded and etched on every American brain.
Senate Republicans will come around, because they have to; in this overheated election year, populist anger will trump virtually all partisan allegiance. But that's the whole point. Why should Senate Democrats concede even a comma, if, in the longer run, the Republicans have no choice?
Good God we're begging you, Sens. Dodd and Reid: Declare -- now -- that enough is enough.
I wouldn't change a word of it, not even a comma.
I wouldn't negotiate further, I wouldn't concede anything further, I wouldn't further debate the matter.
What I would do, if I were Harry Reid, is say that this is the bill we have, painstakingly achieved 18 long and grueling months after the last Republican administration took us to the edge of our deepest economic abyss in nearly a century -- this is where we stand and we're not changing one bloody word of it.
We're playing no more Republican games. We've sat with them and haggled with them and added and subtracted assorted angels from the legislative pinheads. But no more. Their squalid game of obstructionism and delay stops here, on this bill, and it stops now.
Senate Democrats finally possess an unmitigated winner -- a reasonably stringent anti-Wall Street bill, or so agrees virtually every responsible economist; a financial bill which also registers a supermajority of popular support -- and what do they do?
"After meeting briefly on Monday," reported the NY Times, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and "Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, reported no progress."
Dear Sen. Dodd: Progress on what? How does one improve or progress on the winning hand, which later can only be strengthened by merger with the House bill and weakened by Republican accommodations?
From this point on, further "progress" can only be defined from the Republicans' political perspective: They'll tweak the bill just enough to declare that they saved it -- and the American people -- from a horrific Democratic mistake of apocalyptic proportions.
Dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, by shifting a comma or dotting one more "t" or crossing another enigmatic "i," you're only handing those operatically fussy, sea-lawyer Republicans your clear victory.
They've backed themselves into their own uncompromising, obstructionist corner -- and now you, Sens. Dodd and Reid, are opening an escape route for them.
Make them drop the procedural "F" bomb, which by rights they'd have to do -- right? -- sans any more legislative changes, since they've declared the current bill unworthy of divine Republican support.
Look, dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, this filibustering showdown has been in the offing for months. So I ask you: What better time to play your hand than when it's the undisputed winning one?
Damn it all you've got them on the ropes. Now deliver the lethal blow; pummel these latte-sipping, sunbooth-tanning, Volvo-driving, Wall Street-schmoozing predators for the unrehabilitated bullies they are.
Speaking from the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell "rattled off a list of major legislation," reports the Times, "that he said had not benefited Americans in the ways Democrats had promised, including the economic stimulus measures" -- loaded with Republican amendments -- "and the health care legislation" -- loaded with Republican amendments.
And McConnell was absolutely right, the Dems can say. Had it not been for Republican accommodations achieved after prolonged watering-down sessions, the major legislation he cited would have been far superior -- by now we would have achieved full employment, banished the common cold, and all your children would be straight-A students. You know, real populist stuff.
Yet the minority leader is at it again, this time "pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street," as Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago, "while in fact doing just the opposite."
Or, to boil their antidemocratic chokehold down to its paradigmatic essence, as Krugman also did: What Senate Republicans are doing on the financial bill is a "truly shameless performance" -- three little profoundly accurate words that should be DNC-gilded and etched on every American brain.
Senate Republicans will come around, because they have to; in this overheated election year, populist anger will trump virtually all partisan allegiance. But that's the whole point. Why should Senate Democrats concede even a comma, if, in the longer run, the Republicans have no choice?
Good God we're begging you, Sens. Dodd and Reid: Declare -- now -- that enough is enough.
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Let The Sun Shine In......
No comments:
Post a Comment
We post comments in English and only by followers of this blog. While anyone is free to read any of the material here, comments from self-identified, moderate to left-of-center independents are welcome to post after joining up. Others may comment by email and will occasionally be posted as well.