Roaonke DFA Democrats

You Can't Please 'Em, No Matter What You Do

It seems that just about everyone has some gripe about President Barack Obama. Many of us on the left say that he hasn't been progressive enough. Those on the right - the ones who actually are conservatives - moan that he has enlarged the size of the federal government far too much. The wingnut fringe standing on the right edge of their flat earth - including the Tea Pots - spout vitriolic steam about how he must be some sort of fascist or communist, all the while screaming that, no, they are not racist.

So, what have President Obama and the Democrats in Congress managed to accomplish in the face of negative votes by the Party of No and in spite of archaic Senate filibuster rules being abused by the GOP and even with a campaign finance system that puts a price tag on members of Congress? Let's make a list.

1. Fair Pay Act. Done. 2. Recovery Act. Done 3. Credit Card Reform. Done 4. Health Care Reform. Done. 5. Student Loan Reform. Done 6. Financial Regulation Reform. Done.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was signed into law by President Barack Obama the same month he was sworn in as president. The bill was in response to the Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which said that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins with the first paycheck, not the date of the most recent paycheck, as a lower court had ruled. This blatantly unfair ruling was screaming for correction. This law would not have seen the light of day if Democrats had not won big in 2008.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was the economic stimulus package enacted in February 2009. The stimulus has created or saved more than 3.7 million jobs, plus it bailed out the budget of Virginia and other states, in spite of the fact that all five Republican members of Congress from the Commonwealth voted against it. Do you think that John McCain would have pushed for this?

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 requires that you be given information about your account, such as a late payment warning, various interest rates for different types of transactions, balances subject to each type of interest, how long it will take to pay off the balance if you pay just the minimum balance and the total amount you've paid in fees and interest charges for the current year. Sound like a Republican idea?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 expands health care coverage to at least 31 million uninsured Americans. Its estimated cost of $848 billion over 10 years will actually reduce the federal deficit by $131 billion over that decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. In other words, it is a fully-paid-for entitlement. It also slowly eliminates the infamous "doughnut hole" in the Medicare prescription plans, plus gradually eliminates the ability of insurance companies to use pre-existing conditions to refuse insurance. Can anybody tell me the Republican alternative?

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 contained a provision that changed the way students pay for higher education. The reform takes away the private bank "middle man" issuing loans guaranteed by the government. The federal government will now be the originator of the loans. Loan payments will be capped at 10 percent of a student's disposable income . Any debt that remains after 20 years will be forgiven, and for people entering public service, such as teachers, nurses and members of the armed forces, the limit is 10 years. Would George Bush or the GOP go for this?

Then, there is the just passed financial reform bill. While it's not what I would have liked, it sure is better than what existed before its passage. Even so, Judd Gregg (R-NH) says he hates it. I don't doubt that.

From where I sit, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have done a pretty good job, considering the pressure they face from the entrenched special interests and their lobbyists, the corporate media determined to undermine this president, and the lousy campaign finance system we have.

I prefer to celebrate the good and not bemoan the loss of the perfect.

Warner Pleased with Financial Reform, Touts Stimulus Dollars

In an interview with WSLS-TV yesterday, Sen. Mark Warner summarized why he was very pleased with the financial reform legislation Congress just passed.

"We’ve now got a bipartisan bill that puts new rules of the road in place. It’s going to end tax payer bailouts, it’s going to make sure we’ve got rules in place so that no institution is too big to fail, it’s going to make sure that a consumer that goes to try and get a mortgage or has a credit card has some rules that make sure they don’t get into a house they can’t pay for, or the credit card company won’t jack up your rates without disclosure."

For me, the biggest irony of the vote on the bill was that Bob Corker (R-TN), who helped Warner write the part of the bill that is designed to force "to big to fail" financial institutions in trouble to unwind through bankruptcy, joined most of the "party of no" and voted against a bill he helped draft.

Rivally that in irony was the fact that Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin voted against the bill because of its loopholes. Feingold's refusal forced Harry Reid to seek the vote of Scott Brown (R-MA), allowing Brown to write an additional loophole big enough to drive Goldman-Sach's proprietary trading desk through.

Brown got a watering down of the so-called Volcker Rule. That rule originally would have prevented large bank holding companies from engaging in proprietary trading - making bets with its own money - as well as investing capital in hedge funds or private-equity funds. Thanks to Brown, those institutions can continue those gambles.

In his WSLS interview, Warner refused to second-guess state government in how to spend the "surplus" created by tricks in budgeting and short-changing the state retirement system. However, he pointed out that Virginia's budget would have been in dire straits without stimulus money that filled a massive budget hole.

"Virginia only has that surplus because of...the billion dollars plus that came in to Virginia state government coffers from the federal stimulus. And the only thing I would caution the governor the legislature is, those federal dollars from the stimulus are starting to run out… those dollars to education, those dollars to Medicaid, those dollars that went to construction. Because any road construction going on in Virginia right now has been funded by the stimulus. That’s not coming from the state dollars, because we don’t have enough to meet our basic needs."

Warner noted that he has been working on another initiative, one related to trying to jumpstart small business lending. After all, Sen. Warner reminded, more than 65% of job creation in this country is done by small business. He said that the ideas he's been working on are sure to pass the House. He hopes that enough Republicans will vote for that kind of initiative to get a bill done.

The initiatives Warner is working on would "increase some of the small business administration activities," plus take a program already in Virginia and supported by the banking industry, the Capital Access Program, to increase lending to small business.

Quotable Point

"Today, as we watch [President] Obama struggle against a unified Republican opposition; as we contemplate a Supreme Court rendering decisions like the one in Citizens United v. FEC; as we witness the rise of the Tea Party movement; as we bear in mind that the financiers of the conservative movement spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on political advocacy of many sorts, several times more than George Soros and his ideological confederates spend on direct political activity; we see that we inhabit a political culture very far removed from those of the 1930s and 1960s. The misery prevalent during the former era allowed for vast experimentation. The prosperity of the latter, and a faith in government that still existed then, provided a basis for collective action. And our time? Think of this: We’ve experienced the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, and the only mass movement to emerge from that reality is a right-wing populist one. Progressives must believe in and work toward a politics of the common good, but we must also be clear about why that is harder today than it once was." - Michael Tomasky