I was amazed to see this diary make the rec list this weekend: Bernie Sanders Voted YES To Deregulate The Financial Market In 2000, But He Still Can't Explain Why?
Anyone who has looked into the issue knows by now that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) to which Hillary was referring, was buried in an omnibus spending bill to keep the government running (i.e., avoid a shutdown) that passed the house 377-4. The press coverage in the liberal blogs and even some of the mainstream media has not been kind to Hillary on this:
Washington Post: Hillary Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders for voting for a bill her husband signed into law
Truth-out.org: The Most Disingenuous Attack on Bernie Yet
Truthdig: Hillary Blames Bernie for an Old Clintonite Hustle
The ultimate take-down of this appeared in a video by Thom Hartmann that everyone should watch to understand just what a big lie this was:
Please watch the video, but here are the main points:
- The CMFA was shoved into a last-minute omnibus spending bill (negotiated between Bill Clinton and Republicans like Phil Gramm) that all but 4 members of Congress voted for (as noted above).
- Sanders was so angry about having to vote for this piece of garbage that he opposed the Obama Administration’s nomination of Gary Gensler to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Gensler was a former member of Bill Clinton’s Treasury Department who helped write the CFMA.
- Hillary was so upset by the CFMA that she made Gensler (a former Goldman Sachs bankster) the Chief Financial officer of her 2016 campaign [/snark]
Two things Thom does not mention:
- The worst deregulatory language was added to the CFMA after Sanders and the House voted on the original omnibus.
- The CFMA was Bill Clinton’s parting gift to Wall Street that led to millions of $$ in financial industry speaking fees for both Clintons and to Wall Street’s backing of Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.
If a candidate I supported told a whopper like this, I would look forward to the news cycle moving past it and getting back to my candidate’s positive attributes.
So why are Hillary supporters here continuing to push this? It appears they believe in the Fox News strategy that if you push a lie often enough, people will believe it. This also fits the Karl Rove tactic of attacking your opponent’s biggest strength, no matter how dishonestly.
I believe this tells you all you need to know about Clinton and her support: If you cannot make an honest case for your candidate, this is what you end up doing instead.
In advance of tonight’s hastily called, DNC-sanctioned town hall in Iowa (now that Clinton is in trouble there), please share the Thom Hartman video so this doesn’t become a case of, in the words of Mark Twain, a lie traveling half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes — and so people are forewarned about the depths to which Hillary will go to try to discredit Bernie.
Monday, Jan 25, 2016 · 4:49:34 PM +00:00
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Jim in Chicago
Update: I was incorrect in my original statement that Bernie later voted against a bill incorporating the CFMA (I thought I found such a vote in my research last night but can’t find it now). However, the full history of Bernie’s actions is detailed here:
When Sanders voted for the House version of the CFMA in October 2000, the bill was not yet a total debacle for Wall Street accountability advocates. The legislative text Sanders supported was clearly designed to curtail regulatory oversight. The GOP-authored bill was crafted as a response to a proposal from ex-Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born to ramp up oversight of derivatives. But the version Sanders initially voted for was more benign than the final, Gramm-authored version, and it didn't draw any of the protests that the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall did. In October 2000, the bill passed the House by a vote of 377 to 4 (51 members didn't vote), and then sat on the shelf for weeks.
But in December, Gramm -- after coordinating with top Clinton administration officials -- added much harder-edged deregulatory language to the bill, then attached the entire package to a must-pass 11,000-page bill funding the entire federal government. After Gramm's workshopping, the legislation included new language saying the federal government "shall not exercise regulatory authority with respect to, a covered swap agreement offered, entered into, or provided by a bank." That ended all government oversight of derivatives purchased or traded by banks. He also created the so-called "Enron Loophole," which barred federal oversight of energy trading on electronic platforms.
This was an era in which voting against funding the federal government was considered a major governance faux pas. The bill sailed through both chambers of Congress, with few lawmakers even aware of the major new deregulatory changes.
Sanders has since hammered the CFMA, its architects and specific provisions in Senate hearings and on the Senate floor. He helped push through legislation to close the Enron loophole in 2008. He voted against the bank bailouts of 2008, and has cried foul on heavy Wall Street speculation in the derivatives market for oil, saying it needlessly drives up gas prices. He has voted to break up the largest banks, and supports reinstating the Depression-era firewall between conventional lending and risky securities trading.
Again, the last person to call Bernie out on this is the one who personally benefited from her husband’s pushing and signing this legislation AND the person who hired one of its main authors as the CFO of her campaign!
Monday, Jan 25, 2016 · 5:51:05 PM +00:00
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Jim in Chicago
Just to be clear: I think there’s a “yuge” difference bewteen voting for an omnibus that has lots of good stuff in it that needs passage and voting for a stand-alone bill, which Bernie did not get to do in this case. And there’s an even bigger difference between voting with all but 4 members of Congress for a catch-all bill and actually helping write the worst provisions of that bill, which Clinton’s CFO did.
I’d also like the Clinton partisans to make it clear: is their argument against Bernie now that he’s too EASY on Wall Street? I thought the problem was that he was “unrealistic” and too willing to crack down, break up the banks, etc. Do her attacks have to have any consistency or is it okay to just throw as much mud against the wall in all different directions as possible in the hopes that something will stick?