It's Tuesday, May 24 and Day 101 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell laid down his Supreme Court blockade: No meetings, no hearings, no votes on his replacement. It's also Day 69 since President Obama named Merrick Garland to be Scalia's replacement. What's the Senate doing today instead of considering the Supreme Court nominee?
Senate Republicans have a very important priority today, as it turns out. See, last month, the Department of Labor instituted new rules saying that financial advisers have to put their clients’ interests first, rather than being allowed to steer clients to investments that would mean bigger profits for the advisers.
Before the new standard, advisers were only required to give “suitable” advice, which left the door open for them to steer clients into products that made the advisers more money but weren’t the best option. That practice was costing Americans an estimated $17 billion a year in conflicted advice, according to the White House. Some people say their finances, particularly their chances of retiring comfortably, have been destroyed by bad advice and that they would have simply been better off without it.
Now clients come first, and, predictably, Republicans don’t like this. The House has already voted to block the rule on a party line vote, and now it’s the Senate’s turn to take up the House’s resolution. Mind you, by the time the House voted on that:
[President Obama had] already threatened to veto the measure. DOL Secretary Thomas Perez called Thursday’s vote “a waste of time.”
So, yes, the Senate is voting on something that the president will veto, rather than taking any steps toward confirming a Supreme Court justice.
And, yes, the thing the Senate is voting on is intended to cost Americans billions of dollars a year in retirement savings by allowing their financial advisers to profit off of sketchy advice. Republican priorities, folks!
Please donate $3 today to help turn the Senate blue. The future of the Supreme Court depends on it.