This is a very good article under a great title.http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6317868
The Levee Breaks: Democrats Rage Against Obama Over Wall Street Giveaway.
...After a bruising bicameral battle, the House of Representatives narrowly approved an annual spending bill that granted taxpayer support for the risky financial contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown.
...
Hours after declaring White House support for the package, Obama was forced to send Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to the Hill to round up votes -- a public admission that the president's party wasn't taking marching orders from him. By the end of the night, Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the nation's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, were all whipping members to support the package -- a tremendously damaging scenario for Obama's stature with the Democratic electoral base. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her allies, meanwhile, played the role of underdog, digging in for a Tim Howard-esque performance that emboldened progressives, even in defeat.
...
Democrats were unhappy with several aspects of the funding bill. The legislation cuts Pell Grant funding for low-income college students, legalizes benefit cuts for pensioners who used to work for the government, attempts to curb access to abortion, and defunds the legalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia.
But House Democrats didn't fight on the obvious stuff. They made their stand on a complex Wall Street regulation that most of the Beltway political media had never heard of before Warren started holding press conferences on Tuesday.
The banking slugfest isn't a run-of-the-mill policy dispute for Democrats. The central policy struggle within the Democratic Party over the last four years has been about its relationship with Wall Street. President Bill Clinton made nice with the financial industry by slashing capital gains taxes, shattering the Glass-Steagall separation between traditional lending and risky securities trading and, of course, deregulating derivatives. And for years, the party was happy to take Wall Street campaign cash and use it to implement other policy priorities.
The financial crisis of 2008 changed all of that (it also created the tea party and empowered the GOP's anti-crony capitalist movement). The wreckage the Great Recession inflicted on American families -- particularly Democratic constituencies like the young, the poor and people of color -- forced many to question the price of their faustian bargain.
Obama's generally Wall Street-friendly economic team and the necessities of campaign finance politics in the Citizens United era obscured the unrest for a long time. Well into 2014, a common tactic for otherwise hardline progressives was to go easy on big banks. As HuffPost reported this summer in a joint project with The New Republic, even left-wing stalwarts like Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) were routinely partnering with big banksto roll back parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
...
Both Harris and Ellison cited broad discontent with the bill. But Ellison emphasized that many members might have signed off on GOP cuts to Democratic programs if they were better than what
his caucus could expect next year under a Republican-controlled Senate and a broader House GOP majority. But they weren't willing to subsidize Wall Street in the same package.
...
"The last election, the problem is that voters believe we're all in on this cabal together, and nobody's thinking about their families," Ellison said. "The minimum wage is winning all over the country at state and municipal levels but Democrats still got shellacked in the midterms. People have separated Dems from the minimum wage. [Members of Congress] won't let [themselves] be painted in a way that is pro-Wall Street and anti-middle class."
...
The swaps provision was still included in the package by Tuesday, and when Warren jumped into the fray, progressive bedlam broke out within the House caucus.
The Levee Breaks: Democrats Rage Against Obama Over Wall Street Giveaway.
...After a bruising bicameral battle, the House of Representatives narrowly approved an annual spending bill that granted taxpayer support for the risky financial contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown.
...
Hours after declaring White House support for the package, Obama was forced to send Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to the Hill to round up votes -- a public admission that the president's party wasn't taking marching orders from him. By the end of the night, Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the nation's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, were all whipping members to support the package -- a tremendously damaging scenario for Obama's stature with the Democratic electoral base. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her allies, meanwhile, played the role of underdog, digging in for a Tim Howard-esque performance that emboldened progressives, even in defeat.
...
Democrats were unhappy with several aspects of the funding bill. The legislation cuts Pell Grant funding for low-income college students, legalizes benefit cuts for pensioners who used to work for the government, attempts to curb access to abortion, and defunds the legalization of marijuana in the District of Columbia.
But House Democrats didn't fight on the obvious stuff. They made their stand on a complex Wall Street regulation that most of the Beltway political media had never heard of before Warren started holding press conferences on Tuesday.
The banking slugfest isn't a run-of-the-mill policy dispute for Democrats. The central policy struggle within the Democratic Party over the last four years has been about its relationship with Wall Street. President Bill Clinton made nice with the financial industry by slashing capital gains taxes, shattering the Glass-Steagall separation between traditional lending and risky securities trading and, of course, deregulating derivatives. And for years, the party was happy to take Wall Street campaign cash and use it to implement other policy priorities.
The financial crisis of 2008 changed all of that (it also created the tea party and empowered the GOP's anti-crony capitalist movement). The wreckage the Great Recession inflicted on American families -- particularly Democratic constituencies like the young, the poor and people of color -- forced many to question the price of their faustian bargain.
Obama's generally Wall Street-friendly economic team and the necessities of campaign finance politics in the Citizens United era obscured the unrest for a long time. Well into 2014, a common tactic for otherwise hardline progressives was to go easy on big banks. As HuffPost reported this summer in a joint project with The New Republic, even left-wing stalwarts like Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) were routinely partnering with big banksto roll back parts of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
...
Both Harris and Ellison cited broad discontent with the bill. But Ellison emphasized that many members might have signed off on GOP cuts to Democratic programs if they were better than what
his caucus could expect next year under a Republican-controlled Senate and a broader House GOP majority. But they weren't willing to subsidize Wall Street in the same package.
...
"The last election, the problem is that voters believe we're all in on this cabal together, and nobody's thinking about their families," Ellison said. "The minimum wage is winning all over the country at state and municipal levels but Democrats still got shellacked in the midterms. People have separated Dems from the minimum wage. [Members of Congress] won't let [themselves] be painted in a way that is pro-Wall Street and anti-middle class."
...
The swaps provision was still included in the package by Tuesday, and when Warren jumped into the fray, progressive bedlam broke out within the House caucus.
