This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. It's pro-consumer, granting small savers greater access to loans, a higher return on their savings, and when combined with recent sharp declines in interest rates, it means help for housing, more jobs, and new growth for the economy. All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.
Ronald Reagan made those comments when he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions act of 1982, the Reagan Administration initiative that de-regulated savings and loan institutions.
I'll be damned if I can find a vote tally for that bill which was substantially responsible for the S & L crisis and $125 billion taxpayer bailout, but it passed 272-91 in the House. Here's what I know for sure without looking: very few, if any, of the 91 nays were cast by Republicans.
NAFTA, prophetically decried by Ross Perot as inevitably causing a "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the US, was passed In 1993. Democrats were responsible for 77% of the combined House and Senate no votes.
In 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act which de-regulated financial institutions by repealing Glass-Steagall. 90% of the combined House and Senate no votes were cast by Democrats.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was passed in 2002 with 26 of 33 nays in the House (79%), and 21 of 23 nays in the Senate (91%) recorded by Democrats.
As it turns out, lawmakers that vote against catastrophically misguided legislation tend to not only be Democrats, but among the most liberal in the party, with nameplates like Wellstone, Kennedy, Kucinich, McDermott.
I'm growing weary of hearing the right wing noise machine try to scare the misinformed, ignorant, and gullible with frightening tales of the "far left agenda". The "far left" – me; us – keep getting it right. We were right on financial de-regulation, NAFTA, and the Iraq war, and our country would be far better off had Congress deferred to our judgement.
I wish it weren't so. I wish financial regulation would have helped all Americans, not just wall street tycoons. I wish NAFTA would have created good-paying manufacturing jobs in America. I wish the Iraq war would have accomplished something useful, and been over in 2003. I wish we, the "far left', were wrong.
But we were right. And we are right. We are right about single payer universal healthcare, and if we can't have that, we are right about a "public option". We are right about our quest for equal rights and opportunities for gays. We are right about the need for drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and massive investment in renewable energy. We are right about the need for more energy regulation and/or enforcement in the coal and oil industries. We are right about the need to end the exercises in futility otherwise known as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we are right about the need for higher marginal tax rates on the rich.
So we must continue the fight, because the future of our country depends on it, and because Paul Wellstone and Ted Kennedy would want us to.