So here we go again. The Senate has a Bill. The House has a bill from House Financial markup or two. But we all can remember how that has played out in health care debate?

Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs
Mon, 3/22 5:00 pm

Executive Session to mark-up an original bill entitled: Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010

Streamed Yes

Today will be opening statements and speeching. If you are interested in getting to know the players tun in.

And as Sen. McCain has so helpfully informed us, all previous bipartisanship has stopped. David Broder will be disappointed.

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency is to financial reform as the public option was to health care reform, a lighting rod. It is the next piece of the pie, so get ready for the fight. Politely, of course

Thus, with health care (almost) headed for the President's desk, the next legislative elephant in the room is finally making its appearance. And, like those fabled sightless men who each touched a piece of their own elephant and described the whole by the virtues and deficits of its trunk, tail and other parts, the interested factions are each seeing the proposed changes in financial regulation rather differently.

Already whittled down considerably by compromise from what it might have been - from what its House counterpart already is - the question now is whether the Senate's version of financial reform will generate as much storm and drama as the health care bill. One thing is fairly certain, the number of Republican Senators who eventually vote for it will be measured in single digits, quite possibly with another GOP goose egg.

If you did not watch any of House Financial Service in the House, you will have missed the frivolous questioning of Prof. Elizabeth Warren by Rep. Bachmann R-MN-06 and Rep. McHenry R-NC-10. The second time it will be claimed that "we all lose our freedom" is when ivory tower Columbia grad appoints the egghead from Harvard to stand between you and Snidley Whiplash.

On Saturday danps wrote about the Lehman bankruptcy. They diaries are all helpfully dropped here also. Understanding some of the background of what got us here can never hurt.

Like Deep Capture, this story makes smaller, iconoclastic voices look better. Newspapers, magazines and other traditional outlets have had a distressing tendency lately to blow it on the most important issues. As people discover they can be better informed by going to alternative outlets they will gravitate to them. As it begins to sink in that mainstream publications for whatever reason (excessive deference to advertisers, devotion to conventional wisdom, institutional inertia) will periodically fail on a spectacular scale they will find these smaller, independent voices a necessary complement.

Hours or a few days before the regulators knew a player in the "financial industry" that had grown to almost 40% or corporate profits had major problems. Not many are impressed with the base bill.

One important difference between financial regulation and health-care reform: The latter is continuous and the former is not. We pass important health-care legislation every few years. The Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit in 2003. The Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997. We revisit this subject almost constantly. There's continuous political pressure, a large group of committed legislators, and an active community of advocates.

Not so for financial regulation. We rarely make big changes in the regulatory structure. When we do, it's usually to dismantle protections. That's because the pressure comes mainly from Wall Street and there are few knowledgeable legislators or powerful advocates who push in the other direction. So where health-care reform has to be a good start, financial regulation needs to be good, full stop.

No CFPA? No Volcker rule? Financial literacy will have to mean more than balancing your own check book.

And the Most Important News of the Day ^TM, remember the GOP was going to act like grownups last night?

Pictured on the flier are the head shots of 25 of those members in a "wanted" style framing -- the margin of electoral defeat they suffered in '94 under their name.

And to complete the synchronized swimming competition, this email helpfully timed from The Washington Times :

Dear Fellow Fed-up American:

On March 25th we celebrate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 70th birthday and I want to give her the greatest gift America can give her: EARLY RETIREMENT. I believe that if we can raise over $100,000 between today and Friday, Americans will send a clear message to our Speaker, IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO GO HOME.

So in the spirit of celebration, please send me $25, $50, $100, $250 or whatever you can between now and Friday. All week long, you can watch as the ticker on my website goes up, up and up as Americans demonstrate their excitement at the prospect of a U.S. Congress without the stranglehold of Nancy Pelosi.
::::::::
You can no longer remain silent.

The repercussions are unimaginable!

Yours in liberty,

John Dennis for Congress
1592 Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94123

Find out for me. Is Madame Speaker birthday Thursday the 25th? I thought it was Friday the 26th?