How Bernie Gets Things Done in Congress Without Being Bought Off

[Jefferson23]

Opinion with embedded links:

Senator Bernie Sanders is one of the most productive members of Congress. Although his insistence on being an Independent induced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats—and few thought he would last long without bowing to one political party—Mr. Sanders has defied naysayers with a career spanning nearly three decades.

Dubbed the ‘amendment king,’ Mr. Sanders passed more amendments than any other member of Congress during his 16 years in the House of Representatives—despite Republicans holding a majority between 1994 and 2006. He kicked off his political career with an amendment to start a National Program of Cancer registries, which is now maintained by all 50 states. In 2001, he successfully passed an amendment to the general appropriations bill which banned the importation of goods made with child labor, and passed an amendment to increase funding by $100 million for community health centers.

“During this time, Sanders took on powerful adversaries, including Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, the Export-Import Bank, and the Bush Administration,” wrote Matt Taibbi in a 2005 Rolling Stone article. “And by using the basic tools of democracy-floor votes on clearly posed questions, with the aid of painstakingly built coalitions of allies from both sides of the aisle-he, a lone Independent, beat them all.”


When Mr. Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006, he continued pushing amendments through legislation, including securing $10 million in additional funds for the Army National Guard, providing financial assistance for childcare to people in the armed forces, exposing corruption in the military industrial complex, support in treating autism in the military’s healthcare system and ensuring bailout funds weren’t used to displace American workers.

Throughout his career, Mr. Sanders stood in opposition to many egregious legislative blunders now retrospectively viewed as mistakes. He voted against the disastrous trade deal, NAFTA, in 1993 and was one of the earliest voices of opposition against the TPP—which doubles down on many of NAFTA’s fallacies. Mr. Sanders was one of 67 legislators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and against the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy in 1993. He also voted against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and helped secure billions in funding under the Affordable Care Act for community health services.

Despite Mr. Sanders’ self-avowed Democratic Socialism—putting him on the far left of most in the Democratic Party—he has earned the respect of his colleagues in Congress. Amid years of partisan politics where each party has obstructed the other from passing meaningful legislation, Mr. Sanders worked across the aisle with his conservative counterparts—with Ron Paul to audit the Federal Reserve for the first time in 2010 and with John McCain in 2014 to co-write the bill to reform the Veterans Affairs Administration. When his colleagues voted in line with the rest of their party, Mr. Bernie Sanders wasn’t afraid to stray from the pack for his principles. He has earned a reputation for honesty and integrity unmatched in comparison to his opponent in the Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton, well-known for flip flopping for political expediency, courts corporations and wealthy donors.

Despite Mr. Sanders’ impeccable record in Congress, The New York Times recently ran an article initially praising his ability to work with both parties to get amendments added to legislation and passed—but later edited it without any footnotes or addendums explaining why the changes were made. The Times has been infamously harsh on Mr. Sanders in favor of Ms. Clinton, possibly because the top shareholder of the company, billionaire Carlos Slim, is a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Despite the controversy, The New York Times has continued running overtly pro-Clinton articles. Meanwhile, Mr. Sanders carries on, drawing record crowds in campaign rallies as his message grows through grassroots organization—much like his progressive reforms have sprouted into large pieces of legislation.

http://observer.com/2016/03/how-bernie-gets-things-done-in-congress-without-being-bought-off/

[Hortensis]

1. A heavy hitter in Congress basically agrees.

Bernie wasn't known for being corrupted, at least no more than most. He also was never known for getting things done, either.

Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it in terms of his accomplishments and that’s because of the role he stakes out. It is harder to get things done in the American political system than a lot of people realize, and what happens is they blame the people in office for the system.

The financial system is people lending money to other people so they can do things. I do think that Sanders overstates it when he says, “they’re all corrupt.” It’s simply not true. And by the way, when it comes to specifics, the only specific I have heard is Glass-Steagall, which makes very little change in the finance system.

I think he gets a pass from the media. Other than Glass-Steagall, what did he propose in 2009 and 2010 when he was a senator when we were dealing with this? The answer is nothing. Why haven’t you looked at his record?

What Sanders basically says is, “They’re trying to bribe you.” Well what do they get for money? He shows nothing.

There have been a couple of cases of Republican senators trying to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act. Elizabeth Warren has been a much more successful defender of that bill than Sen. Sanders has been.

Heavy-hitter Barney Frank, of course, coauthor of Dodd-Frank

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. that 'heavy hitter' is now a bank lobbiest

[Hortensis]

3. That heavy hitter has the reputation for honesty

and integrity among his peers that Bernie claims for himself alone.

A top economist once described Barney Frank as one of only three among the hundreds in Congress who understood economic issues. He is very good at understanding and explaining how to make our economy work.

"Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions."

"But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency."

“the fabled three horsemen of the fiscal apocalypse—fraud, waste, and abuse”

I have done a lot of work for affordable housing, rental housing. I understand the rap on me and other liberals is, oh, we push poor people into homeownership. And it's exactly the opposite of the case. We were trying to prevent those kinds of bad loans.

“Conservatives can vote for every possible war that comes along and still be “pro-life,” while a levy that applies only to the vast fortunes left by the richest 1 percent of Americans when a spousal exemption is claimed is the “death tax.”

"But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered."

"I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed, for a variety of - well, for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist."

Are you sure you are doing the right thing by insulting and rejecting this ally?

"We have a besetting sin today in our politics where people think that you show your depth of commitment to a cause by rigidity, not just by rigidity, but impugning the motives of those on your side who try to get something done."

Barney Frank, of course.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. and then he left to work as a lobbiest for the banks

Not my fault that's what he decided to do. I used to respect his opinion alot.

[Hortensis]

6. Shouldn't you be rethinking partisanship that

causes you to say things like that about good people? Everyone knows you don't mean, "Thank goodness, at least there's another honest lobbyist at work." But that is the case.

You can support Bernie without throwing all the rest of those on your side under the bus.

[Jefferson23]

5. No, not at all, Barney should be embarrassed to say such things.

snip*The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law failed to break up the banks or put limits on bank size. This has led an increasing number of experts, regulators, bankers, policymakers and opinion-makers to call for the break up of the big banks (see below.)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Too_Big_To_Fail

Wall Street’s Message to Young Adults: “You are Clueless”
Posted on February 22, 2016 by William Black |

William K. Black
February 21, 2016 Bloomington, MN

Wall Street CEOs are very upset with young adults. They believe you are “clueless” and “voting against [your] own interests” when you support Bernie Sanders. A Wall Street CEO took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to decry the fact that “Millennials are flocking to Sanders.” It would be cruel to note that one has to be clueless to believe that writing an op ed in the WSJ was a good way to reach millennials supporting Bernie. But at least we can gain an insight into Wall Street’s theory of why Bernie is bad for young adults. It turns out that Wall Street is worried that Bernie is pushing Hillary Clinton to take inequality seriously because younger Americans take inequality seriously. Wall Street, of course, loves and exists to produce staggering inequality.

These young voters appear to be falling headlong for the Vermont senator’s plaintive narrative of economic “unfairness.” His throwaway prescriptions for redistributing income and wealth are being echoed by an increasingly nervous Mrs. Clinton—despite such policies’ having been jettisoned during her husband’s administration in the 1990s.

Notice the devastating nature of the Wall Street critique – Bernie’s discussion of inequality is “plaintive” (which means “sad” and “mournful”). Human beings are sad about the severe inequality in America – and have concluded that the Clintons’ “New Democrat” policies were a major part of the problem. Given what has happened to middle and working class Americans’ incomes under the neoliberal economic agendas of the Clintons and Bushes, the reaction of those supporting Bernie means that they are voting in favor of their economic interests. The Wall Street CEO inadvertently admits this fact, and comes to his real complaint – the public is furious that Wall Street elites made a fortune by leading the three most destructive financial fraud epidemics in history – and did so with impunity. How dare the American people no longer worship Wall Street?

Both Democrats and some Republicans keep blaming it all on “Wall Street” (Bernie Sanders’s all-purpose boogeyman) for “getting away with murder” (Donald Trump on hedge funds). Don’t they realize that the financial markets are the lubricant of the entire economy—that Wall Street’s capacity to provide liquidity and to broker capital is the lifeblood of American companies? History will probably judge the misguided post-crisis regulations like Dodd-Frank and retribution against Wall Street to have sown the seeds of the next financial crisis. For now, the vilification of Wall Street in the presidential campaign is irresponsible.

No, we don’t “realize” that Wall Street is “the lifeblood” of America. We do agree that “lubricant” comes closer – greasing politicians’ hands certainly is part of the problem. Wall Street is vastly too large and it primarily moves capital to uneconomic uses because it is led by frauds and functions largely as a parasite. Wall Street shrinks the “pie” (the overall size of the economy) and takes an astonishingly large share of that diminished pie. The author complains that “governments lack the incentives and resources to effectively allocate and manage capital in the microeconomy.” He apparently was out of town when Wall Street did exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons – Wall Street’s executive compensation schemes create perverse incentives that Wall Street spreads throughout “Main Street.”

The Wall Street CEO admitted that his goal is to eliminate the already critically weak Dodd-Frank Act and return to an era when there was only a pretense of financial regulation. What “retributions against Wall Street” – not a single leader of the three epidemics has been prosecuted. We agree that this destruction of the rule of law on Wall Street has “sown the seeds of the next financial crisis.” Wall Street is not being vilified – its elites have acted as villains. The business model of far too much of Wall Street is fraud. The author is so desperate that he claims that Bernie wants to recreate the Soviet Union in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the author, who co-founded an “astro-turf” operation in DC purportedly dedicated to “bi-partisan” approaches ends with a partisan plea in favor of Republican candidates.

In an amazing admission, the Wall Street CEO predicts that what Wall Street is about to bring America and Europe is a massive destruction of employment and a staggering surge in inequality that will destroy the American dream. His “solution” is be among the tiny number of winners at the peak of the towering inequality.

[The economy soon] will be displacing service professionals and Ph.Ds just as they have factory workers. The Bank of England projects that 45% of jobs done by people in the U.K. will eventually be performed by robots. ArkInvest expects the U.S. to shed 75 million jobs in the next two decades.

Yep, I can’t think of any reason why a young adult American would not embrace the prospect of shedding 75 million often good jobs and flushing those 75 million Americans into a desperate struggle against each other in the emerging “gig” economy to secure enough scraps to survive. Wall Street CEOs aren’t “clueless” – they plan to get rich by getting paid huge fees to destroy those 75 million American jobs. Wall Street CEOs think that the prospect of them becoming even wealthier by destroying those 75 million jobs should cause “Millennials” to praise them because Wall Street exists “to effectively allocate and manage capital in the microeconomy.” It is, after all, all about “capital,” not people. The Wall Street CEOs think the young should cheer Wall Street’s “effective[ness]” in destroying the middle and working classes in America.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/wall-streets-message-young-adults-clueless.html

How Wall Street Defanged Dodd-Frank
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-wall-street-defanged-dodd-frank/

“Yes, We’re Corrupt”: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics
Jon Schwarz
July 30 2015
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/politicians-admitting-obvious-fact-money-affects-vote/