Strike Three

Someone needs to get Dylan Ratigan a DVD of SchoolHouse Rocks as a refresher course on how a bill becomes a law. Recall that the financial reform bill passed with zero votes to spare; all Republicans outside of the New England triumvirate of Snowe, Collins, and Scott Brown voted against the bill... not because it didn't go far enough a la the NAY vote from Democratic Senator Russ Feingold but for reasons such as, to quote Richard Shelby (R-AL), it being a "legislative monster" or, as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) more famously said, it was like "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon".

Well, late last week, Ratigan had Michael Crowley from Time Magazine on his show to discuss the passing of the bill and Crowley reported:

I think (the Obama administration) feel like the financial reform bill was the best they could do. Again, in a perfect world, they might have done some things a little differently, but the numbers in the congress are very hard for the Democrats.

That makes sense does it not? Dealing with the "Party of No" means you end up selling out key principles to get those last couple votes. It happened in the health care bill with the special deals for Nebraska, Louisiana, and Florida. Now it happened in this bill with the deal for Scott Brown and the watering down of other parts of the bill (such as the stripping out of new regulations on the rating agencies). As ugly and as unfortunate as this is, such is Washington D.C. with a Republican Party trying to score political points on every single issue by opposing what a Democratic Party majority is trying to accomplish.

Ratigan, unwilling to see it for what it is, instead says:

Teddy Roosevelt had the audacity to break those institutions up and resurrect a truly creative, dynamic, adaptable country. This president doesn't seem to have that where-with-all.

Well, yes, props to Teddy Roosevelt. He is not on Mount Rushmore for no reason. However, Roosevelt had the authority to do his trust busting because of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It's not like he was the one who got that passed (and it had passed almost unanimously... one vote against in the entire congress... perhaps the 1890 version of Ron Paul?) So the heck with "where-with-all", what is the authority he wants Obama to use to impose new rules on Wall Street? No matter how much of a Big Government, socialist, communist, etc. the right wing thinks Obama is, he is still bound by the Constitution and the laws and statutes enacted in the past 220+ years and, as such, we are left a legislative process which produces the Dodd-Frank Act and all the problems it doesn't address because the members of Congress do not want them addressed.