Congressional Democrats are counting on the potent politics of regulating Wall Street to force a handful of Senate Republicans to break a filibuster on a significant reform bill. And to remind those Republicans just how charged the issue of regulatory reform is, Dems–particularly in the House–are practically daring Republicans in the upper chamber to filibuster the bill.
“This is a bring-it-on moment,” said House Financial Services Chairman on MSNBC last night.
Frank said he’s confident that Republicans won’t be able to stand together to filibuster regulatory reform, and that, when a bill passes, he welcomes Republican negotiators to publicly argue against key provisions of the legislation, including a proposal to create a federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
“We’re going to sit in public and have a nice conference and you can all cover us and let the Republican members of that conference from the Senate vote to kill this independent agency,” Frank said.
At her press conference last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was equally daring:
“As we go forward, we will see if the Republicans are willing to reform Wall Street,” she said. “Wall Street reform–we said yes, they said no. So, as we go forward, it is just a question of what they believe. Bipartisanship is nice, but it cannot be a substitute for action. Not having it cannot prevent us from going forward. So, if they don’t want to regulate Wall Street, we do. And we will. We would hope it would be bipartisan.”
Of course, negotiations in the Senate are ongoing, and somewhat fragile, and it’s not clear how much Senate Democratic principals welcome this bravado. But they may just be stuck with it. Video below:
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