Word: reform
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...Obama might have bitten off more than he can safely chew in his first year. He seems to have misjudged the appetite of the nation (or at least the Senate) for the change he promised during his campaign. Independent voters have been running for the hills since health-care reform became his administration’s number-one domestic priority, encouraged by the irresponsible cries of “death panels” from once-respectable public servants like Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and the populist anti-rhetoric of Sarah Palin, which veers daily into demagoguery. The 24-hour...
Insisting on the CFPA will doom the cause of reform. The argument here is that reasonable people can disagree on the importance of a new consumer agency, but it's not a realistic goal, because Republicans have declared it a deal breaker. Even before the Massachusetts election, Democratic Senate leaders had decided not to reprise the horse-trading it took to get them 60 votes for health care reform. They want a bipartisan bill, and there's no way that will happen with the CFPA. Why not ditch...
...Because there's no guarantee that ditching it will ensure a bipartisan bill. Health care was telling: Republicans called the public option a deal breaker, but once the public option was deleted, they found new excuses for obstruction. They say financial reform is different, but it's worth noting how many Republicans supported it in the House: zero. (See why financial reform is easier than health care...
...Realistically, the only way Republicans are going to support a financial-reform bill is if they conclude that they're going to pay a serious political price for obstruction. And they're only going to pay that price if they're perceived as anticonsumer; the finer technical points of derivatives regulations or proprietary trading are not going to move the masses. A new bureaucracy might not scream populism either, but it's probably the best way to portray a vote on reform as a choice between the banks and the people...
...group, led by former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, pronounced itself thrilled with the manifesto. "On the right, we all want the same thing, and that's to be left alone," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, who added that he was "pleasantly surprised" at how easy it was to craft a consensus document. "It sings," says Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, an organization that tracks perceived liberal bias in the media. "It has something that every conservative can sink his teeth into and sign happily...