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But they will pretend to try anyway.

Donald Trump and House Republicans in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 4, 2017. (Reuters / Carlos Barria)

House Republicans will go into work tomorrow and pass a bill designed to strip away virtually everything of value in the last round of President Obamas 2010 financial reforms. And then everyone will get on with their lives, because the bill has no chance whatsoever of becoming law.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling, aficionado of industry-paid junkets, knows this. House Speaker Paul Ryan knows this. Not a soul in Congress believes that the CHOICE (Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs) Act, the Houses Dodd-Frank overhaul, will see the light of day. But theyre passing it anyway.

And thats the difference between Republican and Democratic conceptions of legislative power.

Lets start by pointing out that the Choice Act is a bad bill. The acronym of the title suggests banks would have to make a choice: suffer under the allegedly burdensome financial regulations we have today, or maintain a ratio of liquid assets to overall debtknown as a leverage ratioof 10 percent. Higher leverage ratios give banks the ability to absorb losses in case of catastrophe. Theres a germ of an idea here; simple requirements like leverage ratios are easier to enforce than the maddening complexity of much of Dodd-Frank. And if bankers are responsible for their own mistakes with their own money, you could imagine a lighter regulatory touch.

But heres the problem: Theres no penalty for violators of the leverage rules. Under the act, if leverage ratios fell below the threshold for a regulatory exemption, a bank would get a year to rewrite its capital plan. So you could easily envision banks jumping back and forth, reaching compliance with leverage rules and then falling out, facing no sanction for doing so. A rule without enforcement isnt a rule, and the only choice for Wall Street in the Choice Act is to do whatever it wants.

Added to this false choice is a dismantling of Dodd-Franks biggest features. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be gutted, with its jurisdiction constrained and its budget subject to congressional meddling. Tools to unwind banks in a crisis would be repealed. Enhanced supervision of systemically important financial institutions would be eliminated. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration for hedge funds and private equity firms would be jettisoned. Stress-test methods would be publicly disclosed, allowing banks to prepare for these examinations of their balance-sheet health. The Volcker rule, preventing big banks that take deposits from gambling with customer funds, would be ditched.

House Republicans mainly dont talk about these features, preferring to focus on regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions; the CHOICE Act exempts these institutions from most Dodd-Frank rules and reporting requirements. Thats literally the only thing you hear about from the House GOP, that Dodd-Frank unfairly caused the premature death of Main Street banks (which have been dying for decades amid the same market concentration afflicting the rest of the economy, with Dodd-Frank neither accelerating or decelerating that trend).

Incredibly, Republicans are selling this community bank relief feature as their version of Glass-Steagall. That famous regulation concerned the separation of commercial and investment banking, but in Republican hands, it just means unburdening smaller banks more than the already unburdened mega-banks. They are using the name of one of the historys prominent bank regulations to sell deregulation. There was an outside shot than an actual Glass-Steagall restoration, sponsored by Democrat Marcy Kaptur and Republican Walter Jones, would get a vote along with the CHOICE Act. But Republicans on the House Rules Committee quickly shot that down, and so Thursdays vote will just be on the CHOICE Act.

The Senate has a CHOICE Act too: Its about education scholarships. Thats how much the CHOICE Act is disrespected on the other side of the Capitol, where they have no interest in or ability to pass such an overhaul. Any legislation of this type would need eight Senate Democrats to overcome a filibuster, which is about eight more than this kind of package could attract. The CHOICE Act is purely a framework in theory, and will never exist in practice.

Even the White House, in its statement of support for the CHOICE Act, concluded by writing the Administration looks forward to working with the Senate on arriving at a final piece of legislation, admitting that the bill as it is wont reach the finish line.

So why bother with the CHOICE Act at all? The answer is that Republicans would rather send a message than send a law to the president. In 2009, Democrats tried to pinpoint legislation that could actually pass, and delivered as much as possible. Given the diversity of the Democratic caucus at that time, the results were incremental, but they did actually exist.

Republicans have no interest in bending on principle. The House has spent half a year making the same kinds of messaging votes they did when they knew Barack Obama would veto the finished product. Theres probably a bill out there that would reduce Dodd-Frank rules for community banks (although theres plenty of tailoring in bank supervision already) that could pass Congress; in fact, here is that bill. But Republicans dont want to make the choice of getting that done without freeing the big banks as well. So they pass the CHOICE Act, and it falls into the ether, and they can say to their lobbyist pals that they tried.

This is ultimately why congressional Republicans have full legislative control in Washington but no legislative accomplishments. Its highly unusual for a dominant political party to do nothing with that power. But Republicans in Congress are more interested in making speeches than in making laws. And that cedes the playing field for governing almost entirely to Donald Trump.

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In the case of financial regulation, the administrations goals align with the intentions of the Choice Act. Trump has continually selected a rogues gallery of bank executives and corporate lawyers to oversee the industries where they used to work. Just this week, he picked Joseph Otting, the former CEO of OneWest Bank, to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. So both OneWest CEOs in the banks ignominious history, Otting and Steve Mnuchin, command top regulatory positions. SEC chair Jay Clayton, former law partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, just hired Steven Peikin, former law partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, to run the agencys enforcement division.

These personnel moves are playing out exactly as youd expect. Enforcement is expected to be light to nonexistent. Rules are expected to exist in name only. Banks are expected to run wild.

But this repeal by neglect is temporary by design. A new administration would carry new priorities. Only statutory law can maintain policy continuity. But Republicans dont want to do the work. Instead they write the Choice Act and other sparkle-pony wishes for industry that have no chance of success, abdicating their lawmaking role. They might as well not exist. And when the current White House occupant has a scattershot relationship to reality, thats downright dangerous.

Read the original:
Republicans Can't Really Repeal Dodd-Frank - The Nation.

New York Times

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Cuomo Assails Six New York Congressional Republicans - New York Times

New York Times

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Without Obama as a Unifier, Republicans Are Fragmented - New York Times

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson may have won her seat by besting a host of other candidates in the city's Democratic primary, but she did it by winning Republican voters.

That's one of the insights in an exit poll of 900 St. Louis voters conducted by the University of Missouri-St. Louis on election day. The 27-page report was released last month, but has not previously been reported on in the media.

The UMSL researchers found that Democratic voters "split almost evenly" between Krewson and City Treasurer Tishaura Jones. But Krewson made her way over the top, beating Jones by just 888 votes, because she attracted more independent voters and a majority of Republican ones. (Both are permitted to cast Democratic Party ballots in the St. Louis primary, so long as they eschew a Republican ballot that day.) "GOP voters, while a small part of the city electorate, helped tip the election to Krewson," the report concludes.

And overall, the poll notes, how you felt about Krewson vs. Jones was a question of how you felt about the status quo. If you liked Mayor Slay and thought things were pretty good, you likely voted for Krewson. Higher educated voters, and those less happy with the way things are, voted for Jones.

Interestingly, however, the report pushes back on the theory (offered by many Jones' supporters) that Jones could have won if only one of the black men in the race (Reed, French or Alderman Jeffrey Boyd) had dropped out.

The exit poll suggests that supporters of Jones and French had many similarities and that French dropping out may well have resulted in a move toward Jones, pushing her over the top.

But that would not have been the case, the exit poll suggests, if Reed had dropped out. "It appears that Krewson and Reed appealed to voters who valued experience and continuity, while Jones and French attracted voters who wanted a new direction in city government," the report notes. "Reed and Krewson did particularly well among older voters, Republicans, non-Metro users and voters who have not attended a protest. ... Thus, it is not clear that Jones would have prevailed if other candidates had dropped out or if ranked choice voting rules were used in the mayoral election."

The poll also suggests that Krewson may be on the right track, politically, by suggesting a tax hike to increase police pay. It's not just that Krewson voters were more likely to mention "crime" or "downtown development" as key issues, while Jones voters cited "race," "education" or "transportation." The poll also found that a staggering 71 percent of voters supported raising taxes for the police force and that Krewson voters in particular gave the idea 89 percent approval. Jones' voters also told pollsters they were on board with 59 percent supporting such an increase.

That's true even though the police, overall, didn't win high points in the poll. Voters were asked to provide their opinion of the police department. Of those who answered, the UMSL researchers note, just 49 percent said they had a favorable opinion. The percentage that had a favorable opinion of Black Lives Matter? Seventy-four percent.

We welcome tips and feedback. Email the author at sarah.fenske@riverfronttimes.com

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Krewson Victory Rested on Catholics, Republicans and Older Voters, Exit Poll Finds - Riverfront Times (blog)

Every hero needs a villain. A compelling story requires conflict, friction, an obstacle to be overcome.

Political campaigns are no different. Candidates, of course, often claim that they want to run "a purely positive campaign," but this rarely materializes. There are political advertisements that surprise and delight without a shred of the toxicity to which we have become accustomed. And even some ads that are labeled "negative" are useful and informative in their own way; candidates have different points of view, and those viewpoints are germane to an election. But for the most part, candidates have political consultants in their ears whispering pleas to come to the Dark Side. "Go negative. It works."

And negative has worked. Our current president is in the White House in large part because enough voters simply could not stomach the idea of Hillary Clinton as president that they were willing to roll the dice in a dangerous gamble. (According to the exit polls, among those voters with an unfavorable view of both candidates, Trump won handily.) Republicans took back the house in 2010 and held it in 2014 in part by running against a list of things: Obama, Obamacare, Nancy Pelosi (always Pelosi). In 2016, down-ballot Republicans also had the ability to run as a check-and-balance on the expected Clinton White House 2.0. We will repeal this, we will stop that, we will send a message to Washington, we will hold Hillary Clinton accountable.

Well Republicans are Washington now. Obama is golfing or windsurfing and working on a book. Nancy Pelosi is still in Congress, but hasn't been Speaker for almost seven years. Hillary Clinton pops up in the news every so often, giving interviews about her loss that most recently include trashing her own DNC.

But not a single one of these things is preventing Republicans from doing what they promised they'd do.

With a host of opponents defeated up and down the ballot, and now having assumed control of the levers of power, Republicans could be producing policy wins and delivering on promises. One year ago, House Speaker Paul Ryan rolled out his "Better Way" agenda, pledging to promote a positive vision of how conservatives could help the middle class and promote economic mobility. And though many of us in the "reform conservative" realm have always looked at the Trump presidency with a mix of horror and disappointment, there were moments when it seemed possible that Trumpland could have some "reform conservative" sympathies given the occasional rhetorical focus on jobs, economic mobility, and the working class.

And yethere we are, with months having gone by, and so little to show for it.

The health care "repeal and replace" effort sits in the Senate. Tax reform exists, sort of, as an outline miles away from being actual passed legislation.

This week was supposed to be Infrastructure Week a week when Republicans pushed for upgrades to American roads, bridges, and waterways - and yet President Trump kicked off Monday morning with a series of tweets going after his own Justice Department and further undermining his own legal case for his "travel ban". Members of Congress are being tied up constantly on Trump, Trump, Trump his tweets, the investigations, the chaos swirling around the whole administration.

We'll always have Gorsuch, I guess.

In practice, the Republicans' real enemy is themselves. There is no one else to blame. But how can one campaign for office in today's America without someone to blame? And so without a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama to set up as The Villain We Can Only Overcome With Your Vote, Republicans have apparently found a new target: the media. Each June, Gallup asks Americans how much trust they have in institutions, and as of last check, trust in television and print news was appallingly low. (Not as low as Congress, however.)

Of course, while asking for A Vote Against Nancy Pelosi is, arguably, an actual policy position deep down on the inside, A Vote Against The Media iswhat exactly? Voting as venting? But Republicans feel like they've never gone wrong bashing the media and don't feel like this time will be any different. They very well might be right.

The idea that someone, somewhere will campaign in a positive, uplifting way, on an agenda that can inspire Americans? I'm sadly done holding my breath. But if elections are supposed to be about sending people to Washington to govern in a certain way, how tragic that a moment of unprecedented Republican power, with so many foes vanquished, we find so little to say about governing at all. That Republican voters would be so disappointed with their own party's achievements as to need a new Villain of the Week to motivate them a villain with no control over any levers of government at all - is just tragic.

Or rather, today's politics not a story of heroes and villains at all, but like so many of the modern prestige television dramas, we simply have an anti-hero, whose worst enemy is only himself.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of "The Selfie Vote."

Originally posted here:
Republicans seek a new villain, while their true foe is in the mirror - Washington Examiner