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Wall Street Reform Passes Senate: Conference with House is Chance to Strengthen
Three weeks after more than 15,000 people marched on Wall Street and just days after thousands more marched on K Street demanding Wall Street reform, the Senate last night (59-39) passed legislation to rein-in Wall Street Big Banks’ reckless behavior that crashed the economy.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the Senate vote was a “sweet victory” for the “tens of millions of working families who lost jobs, homes and income at the hands of the big Wall Street banks.” He also said it was “reassuring” that
the Senate took this step to protect consumers despite the swarms of finance industry lobbyists who converged on Capitol Hill and outlays of $1.4 million a day to block reform.
Heather Booth, director of Americans for Financial Reform, which worked hard to move reform that would benefit Main Street, says the bill will begin the process of
reining in the unchecked speculation of the casino economy that caused the Great Recession and protecting consumers from fraud and abuse by financial institutions.
The Senate legislation must now be reconciled with a House Wall Street reform bill approved in December. The conference will give lawmakers an opportunity to strengthen the bill, especially, says Trumka,
when it comes to regulating derivatives along with private equity and hedge funds–which function as a huge, unregulated shadow financial system.
Those are areas that the two Democrats who voted against the bill–Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.)–say they want to see strengthened. Both say they cast their votes because they wanted to see stronger legislation. In the 59-39 vote, four Republican senators backed the bill–Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Charles Grassley (Iowa) and Olympia Snowe (Maine).
While the House and Senate negotiations offer a chance to improve the legislation, it is also the last chance for the Wall Street lobbyist army to weaken the bill. The financial industry spent more than $1.4 million a day to kill the bill and planst tol keep up the big money blitz, according news reports.
Bloomberg News reports that the financial industry is
holding fundraisers for lawmakers at a rate of almost one every business day this month….At least 20 House and Senate lawmakers have scheduled fundraisers in May targeting the industry or hosted by lobbyists for banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.
Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, told Bloomberg:
The industry is trying to blunt the impact of Wall Street reform. Their lobbyists will pay tribute in the form of campaign donations.
Booth warns that the big Wall Street banks will fight reform “every step of the way.”
The battle now moves to conference where the big banks will look to weaken or kill the bill behind closed doors. We cannot and will not allow this to happen. And we need to fight the big bank interests to strengthen the bill in conference.
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1 Comment
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Another halfass attempt but no cigar!These politicians are bought and sold by the BANKSTERS and the OIL BARONS.They clearly only represent the .01 percent of our society and the rest of us can go FUCK ourselves.