Merkley-Levin Amendment Can’t Get a Vote
By Mike Konczal, courtesy of New Deal 2.0
Is this a joke? There’s a broad effort, lead by Shelby, to block a discussion and vote on the Merkley-Levin amendment. Even with a 60 vote requirement and some democratic senators missing (with “one hand tied behind our backs” as Merkley said on the floor), it is still being blocked. David Dayen has the best roundup of the financial massacre from last night. If you get a chance, watch video of Merkley and Levin fighting for their amendment last night. They were on fire.
Between the last minute changes, the way the bill has morphed into an endless stream of studies to be ignored at a later date, the dropping of any of the strong progressive resolution mechanisms in the House and the blocking of votes and discussion on Dorgan, Merkley-Levin and Cantwell’s amendments, this has really been a massacre of what was originally a fairly decent bill. Both Reid and the President need to step in before this situation becomes even worse.
Dorgan slipped in his amendment by attaching it to another amendment, which nobody seemed to have caught. The Senate voted immediately to not have a discussion on the Dorgan amendment, thus having to avoid any responsibility for it.
As we discussed before, members of the “Chartered Financial Analyst”, or CFA, community were polled about the Volcker Rule. CFA’s are considered extremely well-qualified within the financial sector, and here’s how they voted:
Even reforms supported by a majority of polled financial CFA’s can’t get a discussion on the Senate floor. But having to deal with it daily, CFA’s are likely to feel how concentrated, politically powerful and abusive the current US financial system has grown.
Mike Konczal is a fellow with the Roosevelt Institute.
