Since "progressives" are always wailing away about NAFTA (Jimmy Carter's and Al Gore's favorite bill) and the telecom act, tell me exactly what's wrong with those. And I would like to see some stats and figures instead of the same regurgitated left wing bile.
As for (again!) Glass Steagall
1. The Republicans controlled the Congress.
2. There was a significant difference between the original Senate and House versions
3. The Senate was deeply divided on the original version on a 54-44 party line vote.
4. The House was not so divided on its version, voting 343-86, so many Democrats voted for it.
5. The bill went into Conference and it was the Conference Report version that was eventually approved, 90-8-1 in the Senate, Democrats agreed to support the bill only after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the Community Reinvestment Act, basically erasing Democratic opposition, and 362-57-15 in the House, making some small gains in Democratic support.
6. It was a veto proof vote.
7. It was signed on November 1999. Bills of this complexity usually take several months to become effective and several years because the implementation needs to be worked out.
Why don't we go back to actual media reports of the day and see what happened in regards to Bill Clinton (bold and comments in parenthesis mine:)
The deal was announced about 2 A.M. after a compromise was reached over the measure's effect on lending rules for the disadvantaged,
the source of months of partisan bickering between the White House and Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who heads the banking committee.
It concludes decades of attempts to rewrite banking laws to catch up with a marketplace that has already experienced broad consolidations and the rise of financial conglomerates offering bank and brokerage accounts as well as insurance. …
While the measure is likely to enjoy broad bipartisan support, it has also been criticized. Some lawmakers and privacy groups say the legislation does not adequately protect consumers and will allow financial companies to share and sell private information about customer accounts. Other critics worry about the further consolidation of the financial services industry. …
The breakthrough in Friday's legislation came in a backroom meeting at the Capitol soon after midnight, when a group of moderate Senate Democrats -- led by Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Charles E. Schumer of New York -- forced a compromise between Gramm and the White House over the legislation's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 anti-discrimination law intended to encourage lending to minorities and others historically denied access to credit.(WAIT! Chris Dodd, who KOS, posters on DU, and elseswhere claimed was such a gooood "progressive" forced a compromise with Clinton and the GOP! Say it ain't so!)
Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Both men said in interviews Friday that they moved to strike a compromise after it became apparent that the legislation might be killed, as it was last year by Gramm, over the debate about the Community Reinvestment Act. …
But the White House found that provision unacceptable and had its own ideas about community lending. It wanted the legislation to prevent any bank with an unsatisfactory record of making loans to the disadvantaged from expanding into new areas, like insurance or securities. …(Bill Clinton wanted THAT progressive piece of legislation?? Wait! "Progressives" didn't tell me that!!!)
When Gramm's measure was defeated by one vote, it quickly became clear that there would be no law unless Gramm could get some Democrats to break from the White House.
But Administration officials had spent all day making sure that the Democrats remained solidly against the measure until their concerns about the Community Reinvestment Act could be worked out(Oh, ok, so Gramm was working to get enough Democratic votes to make this sucker veto proof, and Clinton held out until his concerns about the Community Reinvestment Act could be worked out! Imagine that!)
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/financial/102399banks-congress.htmlSo what do we see in that article? That the White House had been pushing back on this act for months. That certain Congressional Dems, Dodd and Schumer foremost, explicitly wanted to kill Glass-Steagall. That the White House fought them as well as Gramm on this issue. That the White House rallied Democrats to present a solid front to the measure, requiring that the Community Reinvestment Act be protected, which some Congressional Dems were just as happy to toss out along with all other protections.
Think back to earlier in this article when I pointed out what the votes were for this Act. This bill was barely opposed by Congress except for the language in the Senate version to kill the CRA. When Gramm backed down on that, there was overwhelming support. The vote was veto-proof. If Clinton had vetoed it, with a Republican controlled Congress and a majority of Democrats behind it, he would have been very publically rebuked by his own party in the form of an over-ride. It would have given the Republicans another arrow for the “anti-business Democrats” quiver.
Now, remember back to the discussion about the CRA and how long it took after passage to make it effective. The GLBA, a far more complex act, was signed in November of 1999. In 2000, we were looking forward to Gore’s election. This Act would have been implemented under Gore’s supervision, the wonk to beat all wonks. Thus, when Bush took over in 2001, and an entirely new form of financial services industry was charging forward, there was no attempt or interest in providing substantive policies and regulations to prevent exploitation of its provisions. Nope, we were playing by Enron Rules. This Act is the Republicans’ baby, passed with the enthusiastic support of Congressional democrats who would not even have cared about the CRA provisions if Bill Clinton has not told them he would veto it without those protections.
Thus, GLBA was yet another episode in spineless Democrats capitulating to, oh, excuse me, acting in bipartisan accord with greed-head Republicans, and then blaming Clinton for signing what they strongly supported (and "progressives," being the political novices that they are) are more than willing to see this in black/white thinking - which is why the progressive movement has never won power.
When "progressives" are forced to confront the inconvenient truth that it passed with a veto-proof majority, you take the really odd approach that Clinton did nothing to stop it or the even weirder nit pic that he smiled when he signed it. :eyes:
But in that Times piece we see the White House had been pushing back on this act for months. That certain Congressional Dems, Dodd and Schumer foremost, explicitly wanted to kill Glass-Steagall. That the White House fought them as well as Gramm on this issue. That the White House rallied Democrats to present a solid front to the measure, requiring that the Community Reinvestment Act be protected, which some Congressional Dems were just as happy to toss out along with all other protections.
So, as usual, when the facts are layed out and the history is examined, "progressives" find themselves on the wrong side of the truth.
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