GOP Making Love to Wall St.?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Pissed with Republicans’ stalling tactics on financial reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered his biggest bash of GOPers yet today. GOPers, Reid quipped, are doing nothing less than “making love with Wall Street” with their continued obstruction. Reid’s comments come as Senate GOPers continue to stall the Senate’s progress on passing a financial reform bill; after voting three separate times to block open debate on the Senate floor last week, Republicans are now refusing to submit their own amendments to the finance bill, which has slowed the bill’s progress. They say they won’t let the amendment process proceed until Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) reach a strong agreement on how to euthanize too-big-to-fail banks. That agreement appeared to be reached late last night, but it’s still not clear if GOPers are ready to move ahead on financial reform.

Today, Republicans released their own version of a new consumer protection division to counter the Democrats’ plan. The GOP’s version would seriously scale back consumer provisions in the current bill, crafted by Democrats, by both weakening the division’s rule-writing power and continuing to let federal bank regulators preempt rules crafted at the state level. The GOP’s decision to lay out its own consumer division could signal the party’s intention to let the debate go forward, which would allow votes on amendments to happen today.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate