Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Jeff Merkley - and What the Bailout Vote Says About the New Senate

by: David Sirota

Thu Jan 15, 2009 at 20:25


The Senate today voted to give Wall Street another $350 billion today. The vote tells us a lot about the new Senate (you can see the full tally here - and remember, on this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote against releasing the $350 billion bailout tranche).

For instance, both Tom and Mark Udall (D-CO), who voted against the bailout in the House when running for the Senate, switched their votes to support the bailout. You may recall that Mark Udall said he was against the bailout not because he didn't trust George Bush, but specifically because he was against voting for a bill that had no oversight measures. And yet now he's voting for the same bailout that includes no new oversight measures. This suggests that the Udalls (like lots of political aristocracy) have absolutely no principles - that, in fact, they are the worst stereotype of politicians: The kind of people who go populist when facing election, and then goes corporatist when he's comfortably insulated in Washington.

Same thing for Jeff Merkley - he issued a very strong statement against the bailout as a candidate for Senate (again, not because he didn't trust Bush, but because he said he was conceptually against giving away money to Wall Street), and then voted for the bailout today. Again, this suggests Merkley - who I was previously convinced was a principled working-class populist - is starting his Senate career epitomizing the worst kinds of images people have of politicians - those who sound like they're for "the folks" at election time, and then who sell out "the folks" once in Washington.

So what we've learned is that lots of our new senators - even those who campaigned as populists - are already under the spell of "the most exclusive club in the world." And frankly, I don't care what their public explanations are. These are people who made airtight declarations against the bailout on a conceptual level - and then walked away from those declarations when it came time to vote. We've learned (once again) that if there's not constant pressure on lawmakers to respect the most basic campaign declarations they made, they will sell us out.

So what do we do now? Well first and foremost, we thank our lucky stars that there remain a core group of progressive senators who stuck to their guns. And then we  focus on the House. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) gives us our marching orders in this Bloomberg News story:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said he has "some doubt" Congress will approve his legislation setting terms for releasing $350 billion of financial-rescue funds because the White House's mishandling of the first half of the money has created a lack of confidence.

"The Bush administration did such a bad job of administering the first $350 billion," said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a Bloomberg Television interview today. "There's a great deal of anger in the country" over the way the funds were handled.

So this means if you don't want to see your tax dollars once again given away to Wall Street fat cats, you have to get in touch with your House member ASAP and tell them to stop the kleptocracy. Make your voice heard.

David Sirota :: Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Jeff Merkley - and What the Bailout Vote Says About the New Senate

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Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Jeff Merkley - and What the Bailout Vote Says About the New Senate | 36 comments
David ... (4.00 / 2)
has anyone asked these three why they voted the way they did? .. Did they do it because basically ... Obama asked them to?
they were (0.00 / 0)
obviously angling for good office assignments.  
[ Parent ]
that's not a good reason (4.00 / 2)
They are supposed to be representing their constituents and they just were elected.  Jeff Merkley especially ran ads and said straight to the camera "let me be clear, no bail outs".  

One can have the same insanity with Obama that one had with Bush where an entire Congress went derelict of duty and voted yes on the Iraq war to "support their President".  That's not their job, Congress, to be walking yes men for an administration, regardless of party.  


NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

[ Parent ]
or Maybe (4.00 / 4)
they voted the way they did before because they didn't trust Bush to make sure the bailout was handled the right way, but they trust Obama's word to put real protections in place.  The world is never as black and white as your writing suggests.
bingo (4.00 / 3)
For some people, it's a trust issue.  They can trust Obama much more than they can trust Bush.  On principle, I would certainly like to see more protections put in place, but if there aren't such protectures, I wouldn't be nearly as worried with Obama in charge as I would be with Bush in charge.

John McCain <3 lobbyists
[ Parent ]
So, they lied - but they lied about Bush. (4.00 / 1)
During an election, Democrats lied about not trusting Bush?   hmm
[ Parent ]
Nice try (4.00 / 4)
But please read their campaign statements. They weren't against this because they didn't trust George Bush. Their statements said they were against the bailout conceptually.

Perhaps you should try out for a job as one of their flacks - but in lieu of that, try being honest and reading what they said, rather than being a propagandist.

[ Parent ]
Nice insults (4.00 / 4)
Are you capable of having disagreements without being disagreeable.  They were against the bailout because it didn't have transparency and accountability.  Obama says he'll fix that when he handles TARP.  Their concerns are met.

And I'd be happy to be the flacks for these fine Senators.  

[ Parent ]
Agreed (4.00 / 1)
The whole issue was transparency and effectiveness, not being against a bail out just for the sake of it. if the later was the case they should have also been against the auto bail out and the main street bail out coming out of the obama administration (which David is against by sound of this post right?)

They trust Obama and he has earned their trust and ours. For now.

[ Parent ]
I think (4.00 / 4)
I think the problem is the bill does not contain anything to force transparency and accountability. There is only Obama's word.

I don't think you just take any politician's word for it. Place the rules  in the bill if that's the reason they had a problem with the original bailout bill, just don't change the way you based on someone's word.

[ Parent ]
That's an easy one (2.67 / 3)
Are you capable of having disagreements without being disagreeable.

No.

[ Parent ]
Dishonest (4.00 / 1)
You call it a "Wall Street bailout" when it is pretty clear that little if any of it will be used to help financial institutions.

Obama's economic team has pledged to use 50-100 billion of it to help homeowners. Significant parts of it will probably go to autoworkers, small biz, green jobs and the like.

I'm glad that we elected good, progressive Senators like Jeff Merkley and the Udalls in 2008 and will be contacting them to thank them for the vote. I will also be contacting my House rep to urge her to take the same vote.  

John McCain: Beacuse lobbyists should have more power

read between the lines (4.00 / 3)
Larry Summers claimed that $50 to $100 Billion would be used to ease foreclosures.  That does not mean at all help homeowners.  They can claim a host of useless programs that will help homeowners while giving money to the banks to do some sort of educational program.

It's finally come out that Program HOPE is actually Hopeless.  We have US federal dollars to create some sort of fictional maze of bureaucracy for homeowners that actually had no real help in it.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

[ Parent ]
I wrote the same thing (4.00 / 3)
Over on EP.  I came over to Open Left to see who was going to see the hypocrisy going on here.  It's the same TARP, same no oversight, same wrong approach, same absurd, absolutely absurd amount of money and now with a track record that we have no evidence it did anything beyond transfer US taxpayer wealth to the private financial sector....

And yes, these new Senators who campaigned on "no bail out" should be absolutely ridiculed.  

I'm sure more than one voter switched their vote on that promise only to be betrayed as soon as they were sworn in.  

At least the blogs are returning to a little bit of sanity and focusing in on what these "elected" officials, regardless of party are really doing and what really should be done (which they are not doing).  

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

Stimulus underfunded, too (4.00 / 3)
Meanwhile, while the TARP with its corporate subsidies is over-funded, the stimulus package is way underfunded.  Most of that will just make up for cuts in state spending or is a tax cut heavuly skewed to business.

Spend $250 billion from the TARP money on roads, bridges, scgools, alternative energy and we have something that will at least make a start in transforming this country.

[ Parent ]
yup (4.00 / 5)
and I'll add something even more to that, which I've also written about over on EP, offshore outsourcing is accelerating and right now, both the Federal and State governments spend billions offshore outsourcing U.S. taxpayer funded jobs.  Now this is just stupid.  Those are our tax dollars and to stimulate the economy, those tax dollars should be recirculated inside our economy.

Literally they have given jobs to people in India, elsewhere for food stamps.  Here we are with many, many people in the United States, desperate for food stamps and they cannot get a job.  More relevant is these jobs could be done from home, which would really help those with children, the disabled, to earn a living, accommodating their circumstance.  

Imagine it, Your are desperate, there are now 3 people for each job out there.  You have to get food stamps to eat and you get to talk to someone in India with a U.S. taxpayer job to get them.

There was recently a huge controversy of denying health insurance customers their payments, as well as underpayment.  Well, it's the same offshore outsourcing company doing this, and most of the major health insurance companies use them.  

It would take $200 billion dollars to literally buy every distressed residential property in the United States and foreclosures is one of the root causes of the financial sector problems.  That and their $65 trillion dollar, completely unregulated, shadow banking (derivatives) system.

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

[ Parent ]
Which of these Senators are core progressives? (4.00 / 3)
Democrats voting against the bailout:

Bayh, Cantwell, Dorgan, Feingold, Lincoln, Ben (not Bill as TPM reports) Nelson, Shaheen, Wyden

It's really weird.  If you ignore Feingold, and told people that there was a vote with Democrats overwhelming on one side and the other side having most of the Republicans as well as a handful of Demcorats including Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson, most progressives would say that the side with all the Democrats was the correct one.

This was mostly a party-line vote.  It might suggest that Evan Bayh is going to have a harder time than he hoped building the Senate equivalent of the Blue Dogs.

Sherrod Brown and Ted Kennedy both didn't vote.  I would love to see someone contact their offices and ask what they would have done.



Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

populist, progressive, democrat, liberal (4.00 / 2)
We have elected a President who is very charismatic and was elected mainly as a result of his message of "Change" after a disastrous eight year reign of terror.  Many of us who identify with any of the lowercase labels above want President Obama to share our values and hopes and dreams and live up to his promise of "Change We Can Believe In".  Since the election, I haven't seen anything that I can recall from him that indicates that he will.  The most glaring issue at present in my opinion is his silence about the slaughter going on in Gaza.  This call by Obama to approve more of the same in the way of bailouts is no surprise.  I commend the true progressive Senators who voted to stop it and deride the others.  They are NOT doing the People's business.  Obama is being compared to FDR a lot.  From what I understand FDR was not the real catalyst for the New Deal, Huey Long was.  FDR was so afraid of the movement being built by Huey Long's Share the Wealth Party that he was forced to implement radical change.    
Change "We Can Believe In". (0.00 / 0)
That's exactly what some of us are afraid of.  

And, trust is no way to do a business deal worth 400b.  If the autos had to give up their first borns after first slapping them, what makes this so different?  Why don't we know where all the money went?  Why are these banks financing the inauguration?  Double standards abound everywhere, and that's the whole damned problem.  

[ Parent ]
In Addition: (4.00 / 2)
From what I understand FDR was not the real catalyst for the New Deal, Huey Long was.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the catalyst for Social Security was Norman Thomas (Too bad his grandson Evan Thomas Jr. is such a sell-out).  

[ Parent ]
Also, about Barney Frank (4.00 / 1)
Whatever he said three days ago about it, if you don't think he's going to make sure this gets passed in the House, you're going to be disappointed.  
Great observation (0.00 / 0)
I have many issues with Barney Frank's leadership.  He will shepherd this through.
[ Parent ]
Actually, Merkley did what he said he would do. (4.00 / 8)
David, I think it's worth actually reading the "very strong statement" from Merkley that you link to -- and then comparing that to the commitments that Larry Summers made in his letter to congressional leaders.

Here's the key paragraph from Merkley's statement:

Last week I laid out clear principles to address this crisis. To protect taxpayers we should require that the government only purchase distressed assets from American companies and not foreign banks. Second, CEOs on Wall Street who created this crisis should not be walking away with millions in their pockets. I want a deal that provides sufficient oversight and accountability of our markets. And we cannot ignore the suffering on Main Street, sidelining our homeowners and allowing deceptive practices to lead more families into bankruptcy.

Now, compare that to the commitments that the Obama Administration made in the Summers letter - limits on executive compensation and shareholder dividends, substantial disclosure, oversight to ensure that lending actually goes up, requirements for mortgage foreclosure abatement and increased small business lending.

Basically, Merkley laid out the conditions for his support of future bailouts during the campaign -- and this bailout includes those conditions.  (They're not in the bill, but I think it's reasonable to trust Barack Obama in his commitments - at least until he proves otherwise.)

I don't think Merkley's position here is a massive turnabout from the campaign cycle.  And I'm quite certain that he's still that principled working-class populist you hailed just a few months ago.

Full disclosure: My firm built Jeff Merkley's campaign website - but I speak only for myself.  (I also manage Ron Wyden's website, so I've got clients on both sides.)

I've written about this at more length over at BlueOregon.

Stop reading what David links to (4.00 / 2)
Just trust that David is the honest one and everyone who questions him is a liar.
[ Parent ]
that's ridiculous (4.00 / 2)
Firstly that's not what is going on and yes they are helping foreign financial institutions and most importantly, there are no terms to get the money directly to distressed homeowners.

Let's review this shall we?

Now, he says "no blank checks" to Paulson.  Now we have Obama saying trust me.  The conditions are exactly the same, they always were, there is no limits on executive compensation, which is positively trivial in comparison to these amounts, $350 billion, more importantly no evidence this is benefiting taxpayers.
Warren Buffet has better terms for his investments that these Treasury secretaries are getting and bottom line, just switching names from Bush to Obama, Paulson to Geithner, it's precisely the same plan.  There are no controls in the TARP over executive compensation, it's the same BILL!  The same legislation!  

The entire reason Congress held back $350 Billion was to see it's effectiveness and it is not proved to be effective.  They do not even have an accountability of where the last $350 billion went!

Jesus, what is wrong with people, you could buy every property in the United States about to be foreclosed on and still have $150 billion dollars left over for one hell of an infrastructure jobs creation plan.  

It's like people cannot grasp just how much money this is, how it's gone to these private sector companies and no one even knows where it is.  It did NOT increase lending, it did NOT ease the credit crisis and it DID allow mega banks to....do mergers and acquisitions.  oh yeah, Citigroup offshore outsourced a $2 Billion dollar contract to TATA too.  

So here is Merkley is his little righteous video and by his own standards, just reneged on a huge campaign promise that possibly swung him the election.  

NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

[ Parent ]
I think Jeff Merkley (0.00 / 0)
is one of our best new senators, a working class populist.


[ Parent ]
A great quote, particularly relevant here: (0.00 / 0)
"...whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to"

-- David Simon
Creator, The WIre

Never warmed up to Merkley (4.00 / 2)
...so I'm not surprised. I know there was a lot of love for him on this site, but I didn't get it. Novick was so much hipper.

On a different topic, though, what is up with all the nastiness directed Sirota's way around here? I do not get it.

I didn't get the "Merkley is a populist" thing, and I do not get the "Sirota sucks" thing.

Seems to me that Sirota deserves more respect than he's getting here. It's a mystery to me why he sticks around with all the abuse hurled at him.

WTF.

One gal's opinion.

because (4.00 / 1)
he's daring to call out someone who campaigned as a working person Populist and bam, first vote out of the box, no backbone, no spine, pulling the DLC corporate Harry Reid line (which is looking bad to be the Obama line).    Very disappointing.  But it takes a lot of facts, track record for people to wake up, especially when they have invested a lot in an elected official and campaigns.  So, they will attack the messenger on this one.

We can attack Jon Tester on this, he did a chicken and voted present.  He too should have stood up and voted no.  

These Senators really need to get back to the entire reason they were elected, McCaskill too.  She ran on a Populist/Progressive positions and instead kind of turned into Obama cheerleader and now this vote will surely get her much crapola from her constituents.   These Senators were elected to change D.C. and their policy positions.  It's like now Progressive/Populist positions are simply some sort of messaging, campaign rhetoric for image building to get to power.  

Either that or the Pod people are at the gates of D.C. and take over anyone who gets elected where the people have a prayer's chance of real representation.  


NoSlaves.com  


The Economic Populist

[ Parent ]
Sirota criticizes Democrats - equally..... (4.00 / 2)
Others pick a side and then live and die with it.  Sirota expects politicians to be honest and serve the commong good of the people and country.  Sirota appears to have no truck for those politicians who don't meet that expectation.  Others only expect that from the "other guy". Their side gets a pass because it "could be part of some master strategy to get to China by going west".  

Unfortunately, I have the same high expectations of my paid public servants as Sirota.  I'm not into trust me or authority figures; and when the two get put together, I grab my wallet.  

[ Parent ]
Because (0.00 / 0)
anyone that disagrees with him is immediately insulted.
[ Parent ]
I disagree about Merkley (4.00 / 1)
One of my coworkers knows him personally and said he's a really good guy, a genuine progressive and a decent person, both of which are pretty rare in Washington.

I have mixed feelings about Congress releasing the rest of the bailout money. I don't like the idea of bailing out Wall Street, but I trust Obama to handle the money a lot more than I trusted Bush. And I think he wants to use a lot of it to help homeowners keep their homes, and I support that.

but that's precisely the problem (4.00 / 7)
we're not supposed to just trust to the benevolence of the president to do the right thing. That's why we have a Congress. Otherwise, we might as well dispense with elections altogether and just crown a king.

Just because Obama might use the money for ends you personally consider "good" does not mean he should have that kind of power and authority. And I italicized "might", because no one will be looking over his shoulder to make sure the money is being spent properly.

The economic system is so complex, and the forces that want the money so powerful, that we can't possibly be sure the money is being well-spent unless Congress exercises its duties of oversight. And so far they have not indicated that they will bother, preferring to take Obama's word.

Hoping Obama will be a good king rather than a bad king like Bush is not the answer. Even if he does use it well (and he, not the elected representatives of the people, will be the sole judge of what "well" means), the precedent will be set for yet another huge expansion of unchecked executive power, that will certainly be abused by the next Republican president--and there will be one someday.

[ Parent ]
Which bailout? (4.00 / 2)
In my opinion its perfectly reasonable to be totally against purchasing toxic assets and totally for capital infusions into the companies.

One is bailing out shareholders.  The other is nationalizing the banking industry.

Perhaps instead of them being lying corporate thieves they just have a better understanding of the issue than you?

http://transgendermom.blogspot....

Would It Not Be Reasonable (0.00 / 0)
to dictate that any financial institution (or auto company) receiving bailout funds cap executive pay at $100,000 and be prohibited from offering bonuses?
You don't know what you're talking about! (0.00 / 0)
The President gets the additional $350 billion 5 days after he asks for it unless the House and Senate both vote to deny it.  In that case, Obama could veto the denial and his veto would have to be overridden to keep him from getting the money.  But the Senate did not pass the denial.  Therefore, it does not matter at all what the House does.  Therefore your whole story is a pile of unresearched bull.
Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Jeff Merkley - and What the Bailout Vote Says About the New Senate | 36 comments
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