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.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

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